Steel Dust Run
by Arcinae
Summary: The Steel Ball Run North American race spans from the West to East coast of the North American continent. Racers travel by horseback in hopes of winning the multi million dollar prize. Jaune Arc, however, isn't in this race for the money. He's desperately following and traveling with Yang Zeppeli, to unlock the secrets of the rotation that will give him back use of his legs.
1. Chapter 1

**AN**

 **Hey, This is my first story. I had this idea while reading up Steel Ball Run, and realized just how nicely some of the characters fit into the RWBY genre as well. Not to mention, rewriting one of my favorite adventures of all times is going to be great. I'm going to make some changes within the story, some may be more drastic than other. For the most part, characters who die, will still die. However, there are a few instances that I want to change up, and one very critical one that I might have to change to fit in with the themes more. Not too many people have read Steel Ball Run, but i'm going to make this fan fiction 100% readable if you haven't.**

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"What's going on out there?" A well aged faunus elder emerges from his tent, disturbed from his much needed sleep. The man comes out to see his brightly decorated, rugged son, with a fresh layer of face paint looking grim into the distance, in which a stampede of horses with faunus riders charge after a sole, lonesome boy, running with all his will.

"It's Adam, you can't protect him anymore Chief, he was found with… human books in his tent. This is treachery against our tribe." The well defined, skinny son of the elder presented The Holy Bible and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to his father. With a face bearing no emotion, but sorrow hidden deep within the elder's eyes, he proclaims the punishment.

"He will be scalped, is there no objection?" The son was silent, and nodded.

Adam was running. Running on the desert sand that he's always ran on, and the sand tickled the soles of his feet. He was always naturally fast, and his years of training had only brought improvement onto his speed. Yet, with the technique of the human he surpassed any human record of speed by a landslide.. If he was caught, it would be the end of him, and so he kept on running, he couldn't stop running.

Adam ignored the spear that landed just barely to his left while ducking below a rock chucked at his head. The fast gallop of the horses pushed him further, but he had no fear, he was fast enough, and wasn't only managing to stay ahead of the horses, but was even gaining speed against them.

The tribesmen giving him chase looked off at him in awe, with little understanding. They were on horses, so how was the barely clothed, shoeless, Adam getting away? The leader of the hunting party, donned with brown face paint and a terrifyingly nervous expression was desperately trying to come up with a conclusion. Looking closer at Adam, he slowly noticed something was off, but couldn't quite put his finger on it. The way he swung his arms back and forth, how there seemed to be an almost spring in every single step that he pushed forward with.

The conclusion struck him and filled him with even more rage than the discovery of the filthy books. That's not a faunus running style, it's the humans, used to win competitions and dirty money! After reaching this conclusion, he understood that every second he wasted was a second that Adam got closer to escaping on the rocky hills in which their horses had not even a ghost of hope to catch up to Adam. "What are you all doing! Put more into your horses before the traitor escapes!"

"Adam! You always separated yourself from the tribe, like you were an outsider!" Always being caught training with swords not spears, with art painted with brushes he found, as the humans did, without any shame of what he did. In fact, it seemed that the only shame he had was being a faunus, but now, he managed to obtain the human books. "Don't you understand that it's our tribe being shoved off this land by the invading humans! And you side with them?!"

He was gaining on Adam. They all were gaining on Adam. There was no way he could make it to the hills at this range. He pulled out his tomahawk. "You must be punished!" He raised his tomahawk up. "You are unforgivable Adam! Unforgivable!" The last words were delivered as he finally got within fighting range of Adam, and slammed down his tomahawk onto Adam's skull.

Fear flashed onto Adam's face, before quickly being replaced with a grimace. He couldn't go to the sides, he was surrounded by a hills far higher than he could hope to jump. If he went forward or up, he would lose his skull and be trampled. Adam had but one direction left to him, a desperate move. Adam crossed his right left over his left, spun, and dived underneath the leader's horse, spinning in between the legs. That wouldn't be enough, the horses behind the leader would trample him, and he would die a death far too painful for him to imagine.

Adam took his fist and punched the horse in the stomach right as his face reached the back hooves. The horse, taken entirely by shock, reared it's head down and bucked to the left in reaction, and flung his body far onto the rough hills. With blood pouring out of his mouth and cheek, and falling down his bare shoulders, he crawled up the cliff. The tribesmen looked at him in shock, rather than anger. What sort of madman would let himself be kicked by a horse to escape, or even have that idea in the first place?

This shock didn't last long as anger returned, "Arrows! Shoot him with your arrows!" As that final call came out, a shriveled and cracked forearm emerged from the nowhere, visible only to Adam, and climbed with Adam's arm. In that moment, Adam vanished from their sight, the arm pushing him over the cliff. The arm vanishes as quickly as it came. With no time to rest, he keeps moving.

Finally, after putting some distance between them. Adam pulls out a newspaper, and glances over the headline. "Steel Ball Run Race, $50,000,000 Prize". He could buy his homeland and the ancestral land of his tribe with that money. Adam didn't care if they didn't understand his motives, he was going on a trip, and he would win, he would bring that money back and save his ancestors land. Crush the humans with their own running and steal their own creation from them, money, and land.

Qrow was busy trying to deal with the organization of the Steel Ball Run race. Ruby was over in her mahogany chair, looking out of the window of the bright pink room she called hers. Qrow had been awfully busy, and she didn't want to bother him with her boredom. Especially as he tried to deal with the customs of the race and make it all go smoothly, but with over 1000 more people than expected, it wasn't going well. Hopefully, just hopefully, this race would bring them closer together.

They finally reached their dream, so why was it that everything felt so far apart? Her uncle felt more serious now than ever before, even when the had been poor, at least they had each other. Not to say she didn't love him, or wasn't grateful, but a little more attention would have done her wonders. She could wait though, as she always did.

Qrow returned back from his discussion from outside the room, and instantly dropped the calm, collected look and turned to one of suppressed agony. He put on a smile for Ruby, but she could tell something wasn't going right. He sat across from her. "You'll be all right, Uncle Qrow, you always have been! You've been doing this for dozens of years, and they've all gone off without a hitch." Qrow thought about this for a second, but his face was unreadable as always. "Nothings going to plan, and the press has been constantly hounding me about being over budget, and even the president herself is killing me about it." Things like over budget and plans don't matter, Uncle Qrow can fix it.

"That doesn't matter Uncle Qrow, with all those people out here, you're bound to make up the difference, and the president will commend you when it all goes right! It might not be to plan, but that just means that the plan was flawed anyway! It will be all right." Ruby was trying her best to convince him. "Thank you, i'm not sure what it says about me, a grown old man, to have my little teeny niece pep me up, but it really helped. And as such, i'm going to give you a little help of my own!"

Qrow jumped on Ruby before she could get away and got her in a lock and started rubbing his fist against the top of her head. "I'm not a kid anymore Uncle Qrow, you can't keep doing this!" she fake pouted. Even she forgot her troubles then, and was happy to get the attention she craved so shortly before. That isn't to say she didn't try to escape though.

Ruby managed to slip her head after pushing off Crow's arm, just in time for her to get up and get grabbed again. "Slippery one, aren't you, when'd you get strong enough to push me off anyways?" He might have made a mistake once, but not again, as Qrow wasn't going to let her escape and doubled the tightness. She tried wrestling with his hands but to no avail, as she sighed, and gave up.

Shortly after, Qrow let go, and they laughed about it all. "Maybe I haven't gotten stronger, maybe you're just weaker now." Ruby pushed the last sentence with her tongue sticking out. "Or maybe it's just you've gotten way taller." "I like my explanation better." Qrow got up and brushed himself off, "You ready for this conference Ruby?" "Born ready, Uncle Qrow!"

"Mr. Qrow Branwen, you've explained it many times before, but explain it once more for readers around the world. The rules of this 'Steel Ball Run' Race."

"The rules are as follows. The race begins September 25, 1890, there, on the Pacific San Diego beach; the race's goal is New York, in a distance of ~6000 km, and a projected duration of ~70 days. It will be mankind's first North American Cross-Country horseback race! Our crowning champion will receive a grand prize of $50,000,000, second place $1,000,000, 3rd place $500,000 and decreasingly less continuing through 5th place alongside checkpoint awards that are specified within our rulebook."

"As long as the participant is age 16 or older, sex, nationality, social status, nothing else will be questioned if they can provide the mandatory $1,200 participation fee. To exchange horses is instant disqualification. A man of German royalty approached me asking to participate with what he called, an "Automobile." It is entirely allowed. They said these machines would end the age of horse but this race welcomes that challenge entirely, as we are truly pushing the limits of man. We cover medical, food, lodging, and various other expenses and weapons are entirely allowed. Every single participant is an adventurer, and this will be an event like the world has never seen before!"

Cheering came from the press, and muddled questions came in one at a time before they all eventually dispersed. He hates putting on the state personality, but it's just something that's part of the job sometimes. He especially hates when they ask about Ruby, his darling niece, asking if she's his wife. Finally, the race would begin though, and the stress is behind him

The coin pouch clashed metal as it dropped on the registration booth. A small, beady looking Eastern man with a yellow headband holding up spiked hair sighs as he repeats the line for the umpteenth time that day. "Once the race begins there will be no refunds for personal reasons, the start will be held in rain or shine regardless of accidents. Sign here to acknowledge."

The blonde girl read through the rest of the rules, zoning out the rest of the explanation of the man. She came to win, no matter the cost. Hell, if she could have fun doing it, that would be best, but listening to a depressed, vertically impaired foreigner ramble on to her wasn't her idea of fun. She already decided to participate, and wasn't going to back off now. The pen scratched across the paper, as she wrote her name, Yang Zeppeli. "This is your identification number and commemorative badge, you are B-636."

Yang continued looking down, in her beautiful, artisan crafted Italian top. She bore a stunning purple leather tunic, studded with green orbs worked inside the leather, and a metal covering on the top of her shoulders, next to two straps on her that led down to near her abdomen, which contained two strange green steel balls. The purple gloves she wore matched this top in shade, and had quality unsurpassed with Italian leather. Her hat and belt however, looked to be American. Her hat done in the stereotypical western style, covering her pale white face from the sun, alongside her silver belt, which had similar studs to the tunic, and a big green crest in the center with two hands pointing down.

She gave a big, cocky grin to the confused foreigner, her teeth with a false decoration, inscribing, "Go! Go! Zeppeli". She laughed a little, the big moment was finally here. That was, until a strange man came up behind her, marveling at her steel balls. She felt a gentle nudge behind her.

"I've never seen anything like these before!" the excited man proclaimed. Yang didn't particularly want to deal with the man. She wasn't given much of a choice, however, when the man made a crucial mistake to try to touch the steel balls hanging by her side. Yang touched them at the same second his hand collided with them, and suddenly, they began to spin.

Instantly, he was on the floor the man's legs holding no feeling, not even the pain that should be associated with a drastic reworking of leg muscles. "What the hell, bitch, I was just making small talk!"

Yang noted the insult, and with a condescending smile replies "Is that so? If there's nothing wrong with the participation fee on the counter, i'll believe you." His face was flashed with an admission of guilt, he kept himself busy trying to figure out with what was going on with his legs, why couldn't he stand? But dared not speak.

The foreigner speaks, "It's $1,180, you're $20 short."

Yang grins. "And you don't give discounts?"

"No discounts here, what, do we look like a random shop?" The man still can't stand. "But you saw me put the money on the table." Yang continues, not breaking her grin.

"Sorry, I didn't issue a receipt yet, so what's short is short." "I see. Give me back the coins you swiped from me." Yang does something with the steel balls, and suddenly, the man is in a world of pain. The coins drop from his terrified hand.

"If I don't have that money, I wouldn't be able to enter the race, and win, would I?"

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 **I cut out the bit with Sandman and his sister, since it was something that didn't matter that much. I found myself noticing a lot more detail going through it a second time, especially so because I have to closely study each image in order to detail it in words. For the most part this chapter, outside the Ruby and Qrow bit, it was pretty faithful to SBR. I had Yang as Gyro simply because of how similar they were, but every single line that came out of Gyro's mouth sounded exactly like something Yang would say. No Johnny this time, he wasn't introduced in the first chapter of the manga either, next chapter we'll hopefully get into the first part of the race.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Wow, Johnny really did have a rough past eh? I changed it up, since Jaune isn't the sort of character that would let that go to his head, but I still needed to keep the family issues in place, and a reason for him to be shot. Yang is a bit different this chapter, less cocky and more serious the whole way through, but that'll change as she and Jaune get to know each other. After all, he just ran up to her and started messing with her stuff, AFTER she had just been forced to indirectly kill someone. I covered two chapters this time, as I just felt like doing only ch2 would have left this one too short. I also changed up Pocoloco's side of things as well, to a bit more how i'd see Neptune doing it. Neptune wasn't a slave, so I just had him as a farmer with his family, would explain why he wasn't fired haha.**

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The blue haired, deeply tanned boy lazed around on the grass. The wind tickled his nose as he inhaled the scent of freshly cut grass. He gazed up towards the skies, with little care for the things around him. Eight… Nine… Ten… The boy, Neptune, counted the clouds one by one as they passed over his head. There was work to be done, he had to tend the farm with his uncle, but what good would that do?

That wasn't the life Neptune wanted. No, he knew what he wanted and he was going to grab it. Neptune wanted adventure, and the Steel Ball Run race was just that. A chance to get away. No matter how poor he was, he would get that $1,200 somehow.

Tenchusatsu. The lowest point in your life is called Tenchusatsu. Neptune had never lived an easy life, but after drinking and gambling away what little money his family gave him in town, he was treated to an awakening call by his grandmother. The word echoed in his mind again, Tenchusatsu, that's what she had taught him about.

Neptune's grandmother may be many things, eccentric, superstitious, suspicious, whatever label you wanted to slap onto her, she could find someway to fit it. Yet, she had never guided him wrong before, not once in his entire life. After your Tenchusatsu, you reach a period of great joy and luck, take it to the fullest.

When Neptune saw the advertisement for the Steel Ball Race, he knew this is where he was destined to go. "Old man, if I work doubly hard this month, will you let me get $1200? I have something I need to do. I won't be back for a while after, but you'll see me again." Neptune's uncle looked at him in utter confusion, but he didn't expect his easily influenced nephew to actually go through with it, so he shrugged and accepted.

Back at the registration tent, two officials of the Steel Ball Run race came and dragged away the man who had made a critical error in choosing to rob the one person who wouldn't concede victory no matter what. "T-That man really did steal your money! I'll call the police right now!"

 _Great, useless encounters with the law to deal with, it wasn't enough that I was almost robbed or anything_. Yang continued complaining, before replying, "I can deal with that all later, no biggie, now, can I get my receipt?"

Yang Zeppeli exited the registration tent. Looking around at the city of tents that had erupted overnight, she gave another grin. Looking at all the racers, it sped her heart with anticipation and she had no idea how she could wait a full two days for the race to begin. She had to let off some steam, and she had to let it off soon or there was no way she could keep herself sane.

Before she could get anywhere though, she heard a scream behind her. "It's not over yet, jackass! You think you're so tough with those… those things at your side?! Kill me then! Do it!" It was the man she had just left to the guards. What a perfect time to meet him again.

Her back still to him, the Zeppeli grin painted her face with an arrogance that could talk down the president. The guards restraining him lost their grip as if on cue, and he pulled out a gun. "Ha! You could be dead right now!" The guards managed to snatch the gun away and shove him on the floor. "You got lucky, you didn't even catch when I stole your money! I'll get you back you bitch!"

Now she really needed to blow off some steam. Due to both her impatience for the race, and the urge to fight over took her. She was Yang Zeppeli, how the hell was she going to turn away from this? Turning around, and revealing her grin to guards and man, "Give him back the gun" exited her lips. The green cloaked race officials looked at each other in intense confusion.

Obliging her wish, they threw it on the sandy desert in front of the man who still lacked control of his legs. The man's arrogance ran away and his breathing visibly shifted as he slowly, shakily reached for the handle of his cheap looking revolver. He was only a few inches away from it, so why did it feel like it was across the ocean? Every inch he got closer brought his heart rate faster, and faster, and faster until it felt like his heart pounded outside of his chest. Yet, he was still advancing towards it, no matter how unsteady.

"But." Yang interjected his advance, and any trace of a grin disappeared from her face. Blowing off steam was good and all, but she treated every fight as one to the death. She looked at him like she would an insect. "If you take the gun, It'll show you're truly devoted to ruining my race. And I don't take kindly to anyone who will stop me from winning."

The words cut through him and he froze, his eyes scrambling around the vicinity to gaze at the growing crowd around them. Desperately he tried to will his hands to move, but he couldn't so much as blink.

As officials ran away, likely looking for the sheriff, a naive looking boy in a wheelchair started rolling towards the scene. The boy had bright blonde hair, not unlike the girls, but a little sandier looking. He wore sky blue jeans with pink stars adorning them in a pattern like the night sky, above was a rolled up ocean blue jacket and a hat with the same pattern as the pants, with a small horseshoe at the crest of the hat.

He was trying to get through the crowd to see the commotion, what was going on that would draw a crowd this big? Probably nothing important, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he just had to see. "H-Hey, excuse me, can you let me pass?" Not a single person moved, their eyes glued to the scene in front of them, he finally maneuvered his way to the front after taking the spot of an official that ran.

The scene continued to unfold before his eyes now, a foreign lady, stunning to look at with beautiful long blonde hair and brightly decorated clothes looking down on a clownish looking man on the floor. He couldn't help but stare slack jawed at the imposing figure she gave. A figure that demanded respect, but also intrigued curiosity.

The man on floor was trembling before he began to move his hand back and laugh. The man on the floor and the beautiful woman locked eyes, and the silence was even more deadly than the situation at hand. Suddenly, the man on the floor let out a nervous laugh, in the distance the sheriff can be seen running towards the scene, but no one paid him any attention. "H-H-Hahaaa, it was just a joke! Good l-luck in the race! I'm just a pickpocket, I couldn't mess with you if I wanted!"

These last words were barely stammered out before the sheriff finally arrived. "What the hell is going on here? No fighting on the beach!" In that brief instant, of Yang looking at the sheriff and not her challenger, the man scurried for the gun and aimed it at her. Yang was conflicted, happy she could let off the steam, but angry the man had misunderstood her mercy as weakness, and threw his life away for no reason.

She grabbed the steel ball at her right side, and threw it at the man's arm while hovering her left arm over the other. The man's face distorts into pain, and blood spews out of the arm. The arm, however, was not decapitated, broken, or anything of the like. It was in a spiral, twisted around so much that the gun pointed at Yang now points perpendicular at the forearm. The entire crowd, including sheriff and officials are stunned at what they are perceiving.

The ball keeps digging into the arm, creating a large dent before returning to Yang. "See a doctor. End this here." She began to turn, but wasn't allowed to. The man, sweat running down his face, turns to look at his arm and yells an incomprehensible insult at Yang, using his other arm to steady the gun, before the full effect of the spin takes effect and the dirty revolver is pointed at the man's head. The main sees this too late, and the bullet was already fired, and the man's head explodes in a rain of blood.

Everyone made up their own excuses for what happened, desperately trying to reason what could have gone on. The sheriff let the crazy situation rest, because it was a fair duel, and no laws were broken. The man saw more than they did though, or maybe the others intentionally tried to forget what happened. The Steel Ball… It was spinning abnormally fast when it hit the guy's arm! "Miss! What's going on with the steel ball?" The boy wasn't normally one to be so direct, but that thing, it influenced the thief's body! What about.. What about his legs. He had to find out, and it was now that he had to know.

He rolled his wheelchair as fast as his arms would allow, the girl was walking off, not thinking twice about the manner. If this continued he was going to lose his chance, he just had to touch it. He got by her, and reached out for the ball. "Hey! Be careful it's still spinni-" the sentence was cut off as the boy's hand connected with the ball. For that moment, for that little second, the crippled boy found himself able to use his legs and stood on his feet, as if a god had personally healed him for just a moment.

When the boy was a small child, he had grown in love with riding horses. It was at the age of five when he first rode a horse. He had a knack for it as well, and everyone around could see it. The boy could understand the little nuances of riding and appreciate them, the rhythmic clapping of the hooves against the dirt ground, the way the breathing changes based on terrain. He loved every bit of it, but his family was never supportive, and in fact began to hate the fact their son rode. He ran away from home, stealing his family's horse at the same time.

Slowly, but surely, surviving off hope he built himself up in the Jockey community and became world renown. The kid, Jaune Joestar tried to reconnect with his family, and with his newfound fame they welcomed him back with gracious arms.

Jaune had everything he could ever want, but he never let it get to his head. He was never very good at reading people, or making friends, so when all these people flocked around him for racing, something he really loved, it made him feel wanted. After all, even his own family finally came around! The cheers, the cries of his name, he loved it, but all he wanted was for his father to approve of the racing and now he had that too. What more could he want?

There were some who weren't fans of Jaune's rise in horse riding, and one day, when he was off to see a girl who he fell for at first site, she pulled a gun on him and shot him. Unlucky for her, and unlucky for Jaune, he survived. How was it unlucky he survived? He had to life in a wheelchair, Jaune couldn't jockey and he couldn't live on like this.

He woke up in a smelly hospital bed, the cheapest that his family found. All his wealth transferred to them, and as he was only worth something as long as he kept the dollars rolling in, no one came to visit him. The staff at the hospital frequently messed up basic care taking and he found himself in great pain.

Jaune was finally discharged, and came out to a near empty bank account and returned to his family who begrudgingly and rudely put him up. His father never around and the rest of his family always making themselves scarce when he was around, Jaune had no reason to live.

He had around $1500 in his account left, and the day he heard of the Steel Ball Run race, he knew he had to compete. Jaune had nothing to lose, and no matter what, he wanted to ride a long journey one last time to discover purpose.

So it was all the more surprising when he stood, when he moved his legs and he stood. When Jaune, Jaune Joestar, stood up on legs which were determined to be useless long ago. _What the hell, What the hell! What the HELL just happened!_ His heart rate accelerated and if he could imagine what a heart attack felt like, that would be it. _I touched the steel ball, I touched it.. And I stood._

The woman was already leaving, after hopping on her horse. It had been two years since the "love of his life" took away his joy in the world. No matter how much support his fans gave him, his legs never moved a single millimeter. No matter how passive Jaune was, he had to meet with that woman. "Move out the way please!", he didn't even care if they did or didn't, as he pushed through those that stood still. The crippled, paraplegic boy, gave chase as fast as he could.

The lady finally stopped in front of him, turning around to look at him. "Leg boy. Do you know the two leading causes of death? The first is a sickness of mosquitoes and the second is being kicked by a horse, are you trying to change the order? I understand it's gotta be crazy to stand up with.. uh.. your situation," gesturing at his wheelchair, "But that was just a coincidence, y'know, sheer chance." No. He wasn't going to give up at that. "That can't be true! N-Nothing else has ever let me stand, nothing in two years!"

His voice faltered, but he kept going. "The ball, it was spinning, please, please, i'm begging you, let me try that again!" She sighed, "I'm sorry, I can't help you, it was a coincidence." She turns from looking at him to advance away again.

 _No, no no no no, she can't just leave me, not after that! If she won't let me touch it, then damn it i'll touch it myself!_ He hadn't ever been this aggressive, for as long as he could remember, but a solution to his depression, a path of light opened in front of him, if he couldn't be aggressive now, when could he?

Jaune sped as fast as he could, rolling his wheels, he got sped up a ramp and soared side by side with the woman, who for the first time, he saw surprised. I can grab it! I can grab the steel ball! He extends his arm to grab the steel ball, and the second he makes contact, his arm turns around, and grabs the rafters of a nearby building.

It was guided there by the woman. She sighs. "Look, before I break you the bad stuff, i'll tell you the truth, you surprised me there. Very few people surprise me, and i'll admit it, these steel balls are my weapon, but look, it really pains me to tell you this, but it won't make you walk again." With tears running down his face, Jaune says "No! After all that happened I can't believe that! I'll figure it out, i'll understand the secret of your spin!"

She sighs, "The Steel Ball Run race is going to begin soon, you can't even get on a horse. I'm not going to be on this beach forever." Still stuck to the rafters, he manages to pull off before falling flat on his floor, sand sticking to his tear wet face. He scrambles onto his wheelchair, after making sure he got on, the girl began to ride away. "Damn it, i'll compete! I'll get on a horse again, and I WILL race!"

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 **What a great conclusion, I felt good about ending it off at this point. I'm going to try to update this pretty regularly, as i'm in a nice influx of free time and I currently have the urge to write a lot. This story is absolutely a blast to go through, and i'm looking forward to writing it out, even if it is a little hard. I find myself struggling with describing things the most, but I can already feel myself getting better since the last chapter. Expect a new one soon :)**


	3. Chapter 3

**This chapter is a little bit shorter than the others. I was thinking of going ahead and going to the next chapter to extend it, but it ended in such a climactic point that it felt weird to continue writing, combined with the switch in perspective right off the bat, I decided to leave it at this length. Since i'm looking at the slides of the manga side by side when doing this, I have to make the decision every time whether or not I want a character to use their RWBY outfit or their Steel Ball Run outfit. Neptune/Pocoloco for example, I designed him to look like Neptune, but little miss Yang Zeppeli over here looks like the spitting image of Gyro. Because Qrow/Stephen Steel's outfit is ugly, and Ruby/Lucy's is too bland for Ruby's taste, I put them both in their RWBY outfits. We get to see more of both of them soon.**

 **I hope you enjoy the chapter. If you do, leave a review and tell me! It feels great getting them. If you don't, leave a review and tell me why. Get the message? :^)**

 **Seriously though, this story is crazy fun to write, and it gives me an even deeper appreciation for Steel Ball Run. Enjoy!**

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Yang relaxed in her tent, looking over all the various supplies she was going to need throughout the trip. She ran inventory one last time to make sure she had everything important. Teddy bear, canned food, toothbrush, comic books… Rattling off her list of items in her head, she found it to be a little too heavy for her liking. Looking over it all, the first few decisions of what to ditch were easy, magnifying glass, ink, pocket watch, after all, who needs to tell time when they have the sun! However, the last was the most excruciating, scissors, or her teddy bear.

After brief moments of thought, she came up with the weak excuse that she could just use her knife for whatever the scissors were going to do, and shoved the pink, smiling, "I love you!" teddy bear back into the bag with a little giggle.

Sick of the tent, Yang went outside for a breath of fresh air. She loved the beach smell, after all, and it wasn't every day she got to bask in it. However, in the ground near her tent, a familiar wheelchair was lying down on it's side, dirtied from all the sand. Only one person she knew had a wheelchair, and her faced turned grim as she considered what could have happened.

What the hell has he gotten himself into? She looked around a bit, and peering down at the horse corral a few down from the one nearest to her, a distinctive starry blue figure was desperately holding onto a horse's stirrups while being dragged by it in an unpredictable fashion.

Yang had noticed the boy starting the night before, trying to claw his way up onto the poor old horse he managed to buy, but there was no way in hell she expected him to go through the night and more. The boy was grievously injured, even she could see that. It looked like blood was creeping out of every pore in his entire body. _He'll die at this rate_ …

The moment that thought crawled into her mind, he was knocked through the corral fence by the horse he was attempting to ride. A bit of the wood skewered his calf.

Yang Zeppeli wasn't one unaccustomed to seeing blood, or injuries in any way, shape, or form, however, even she tensed up her legs after seeing the dirty, bloody stick protrude from both sides of his pitifully small calf. The boy wasn't going to stop even at that, he began to slowly crawl to the horse that began to dance all around him, as he cowered and covered his head. He's going to die! Should I interfere? _No.. This isn't my fight, and if I help him, i'll crush any sort of will he has to live. I'll lower his self worth to a point where he'd probably off himself before the night. I need to let him get through this alone._ The prospect of just abandoning him pained her, but it was the best she could do.

No, there was no way. In fact, as petty as it sounds, this entire experience was ruining her mood, no matter how much she wanted, there was nothing she could do. Yang turned away from the corral and began walking away, in the direction of a food stand. She was stopped by the calling out of a lightly accented, masculine voice."Excuse me Miss, Where can I sign up for the race?" She turned around to see… a faunus?

That was definitely something new. The faunus had bright red hair put up into spikes, and horns protruding out of his head. The man was scantily dressed, but that wasn't the strange part about it. A faunus in society was unusual in these parts, but to find one that wanted to compete in the race no less? No matter, she held no ill will towards the faunus, being raised overseas, safe from the toxic culture of her current country, so she directed him handily. He nodded and gave thanks, before hurrying off.

Adam proceeded towards the tent, directed by the stunningly beautiful woman. He entered the tent, and was greeted to a less than extravagant site of short foreign man standing there, behind a sandy counter, obviously bored, alongside some chairs and what looked like to be an adult magazine. "What the hell do you want?" Adam wasn't unused to such initial aggression, and shrugged it off. "I want to participate in the race." This triggered a snicker from the man.

"Where the hell are you going to get that sort of money? You couldn't raise it in a million years!" _I could probably steal it off your dead body_. Briefly considering that bloody solution, Adam pulled out a pouch that held an emerald.

It was a present after turning of age in his tribe. Ironic, wasn't it, the gift from the tribe that kicked him out, would allow him to save their land. The miniscule man's expression and mannerisms changed instantly, to one of greed rather than annoyance. "Where the hell did you get this Indian! Are there more?" Adam declined to answer, favoring, "Does this cover my acceptance fee?" "Shut up for a second! Let me inspect it!" _Filthy human, obsessed with himself and only himself._ The magical hand that had saved him on the mountain suddenly appeared again, invisible to the man behind the counter, and flicked sand surrounding the emerald into the employee's eye. "God DAMN IT, I got sand in my eye!"

Maybe he'll answer this time, "I ask again, does this cover my acceptance fee?" The man was quick to wave it off, "Yes, yes, i'll get your documents ready, and your change. We'll need your horse's footprint before the start as well." "Keep the change." There was no use for that money now, and he wanted to skip the hassle. "And I won't need a horse footprint either, i'll travel by foot."

Qrow shuffled around, adjusting his collar. The intercom blasted instructions to the participants, directing them to the starting was supposed to give an opening ceremony, and took his place on stage, his darling niece right behind him. There he was, in front of thousands of racers, each with their own aspirations, dreams, and reasons why they're in the race. Beautiful in it's own kind of way, but hideous from an aesthetic sense that his view consisted of primarily large, smelly men. He raised his arm into the sky, and swiftly brought it down.

This prompted the unveiling of a large block of ice, with a large, golden trophy inside of it. It was time for his opening ceremony at last. "This ice, froze over 300 million years ago. Imagine that, humans didn't even exist at that time, no one existed. The things that inhabited our wondrous planet were dinosaurs and fish. This is the ice of the Steel Ball Run race. We've gone through strict calculations and found the ice is timed to melt and unlock the trophy as you reach the finish line." Qrow stopped, and with a little bit of a grin, "Well, I think that broke the ice!" Officials all groaned, surprised he went through it. Ruby clapped of course, she loved his jokes, they were for people of a more mature mindset. "There's three minutes before this race begins, get ready to make history."

Jaune was being dragged by his horse who he had barely managed to force to the starting positions, and ignored the comments around him. This was his last chance to live. His last chance to find a purpose to continue on in such a pointless world. Those steel balls, they held the key to getting back his old life, to getting his father to accept him. He sort of directed his horse by leaning to whatever side he wanted, and gently nudging her with his arms. Purposefully, he took up the starting position that was right next to the woman who held the steel balls at her side.

As his old, weak horse dragged him next to her, lining up out of sheer instinct rather than any skill Jaune had, he noticed she shot him a glance. Jaune held his face to the floor, his wrist limp in the stirrups, that had long gone numb to any pain within his body. His other arm was bent in unnatural shapes. Maybe there was no hope in continuing, no reason to push on, but he had to try, how could he live if he didn't try! His horse looked down at him, and it looked like for the first time in years, it's old eyes shined. It bent over and licked Jaune, lightly, but repeatedly.

"Why…?" Jaune looked up at the lady, and continued to ask, "Why won't you teach me the secret? I know it's in the spin. No matter how long it takes, or how long I have to push on, even if I can't catch up until after the race is over, i'll figure it out." Silence passes, they share a gaze, and he sees the familiar focused look she naturally gave off, turn into a beautiful smile.

"What's your name?" The lady asks. "Jaune. Jaune Joestar." Why the hell was his name important at a time like this, Jaune didn't know. He wasn't given much time to think about it before she introduced herself, though. "I'm Yang, Yang Zeppeli. Now, Jaune, Jaune, Jaune. You've convinced me, I've taken a liking to you, so i'll give you a little hint. If you can use my hint, that's on you now isn't it my little Jaune? You've already figured it out, you've found the answer. So if you need to get on the horse, so why don't you?"

She gave him a blasted grin at the end of that last line. The grin struck both confusion and confidence into Jaune's heart, what a contradiction.

 _What? What does she mean by that.. Already found the answer?_ The announcer blasted again, telling them they only had two minutes left until the race was beginning. There was no time for indecision within what he was going to do. It was now or never, to remain a cripple or to evolve. He looked around at him, horses stretching out in both directions as far as the eye can see. Jaune looked back at Yang, who dropped her grin for a more solemn expression. There was no time to deeply consider everything, what had just happened that Yang had seen, he had dragged there, rested with the horse, the horse licked his face and then he- That was it! The horse had licked his face. It didn't make much sense, but he'll trust her, for if he can't trust her then this was all for nothing.

"Come on buddy.. lick my face." They used to call him a horse whisperer, all those times had to count for something! Success! It began kneeling down to lick. As it came down, near the ground, he noticed an opportunity. What else had Yang seen him to know? Excluding all the unimportant junk that had happened, all he had talked about was the steel balls, and how the secret lies with the spin.

It clicked together like a puzzle, and a raging smile overtook his face and he could see Yang grin out of the corner of his eyes. The horse's neck was extended down near the ground, he moved his upper body up on to the neck. It's time to spin! He twirled himself as best he could, and span the horse a little as well. _This isn't going to be enough.. It's all in the spin! I have to place my hope on the spin!_ How did the steel balls do it? They didn't move, they stood perfectly still but rotated at high speeds. He just had to make himself like a steel ball. "Thank you, Yang! Thank you!" He screamed out as he did a backwards roll onto the saddle. Those around Jaune looked surprised, surprised a cripple could get on the horse, surprised he wasn't dead from all the injuries from the horse, but none was more surprised than Yang. "Nyo Ho!" What sort of laugh was that? He didn't know, but he didn't care either. He turned to say something, but the announcer blasted for the final time. "The Steel Ball Run race begins now!"

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 **Next chapter we start off with the race proper, and all the backstabbing madness that goes with it. The end of this chapter was particularly fun to write. I made Jaune, being a little slow sometimes like he is, think through exactly what Yang had said. I also made Yang a little friendlier to Jaune than Gyro to Johnny, because that fits her character much more. Next chapter i'm going to start diverting from the plot a lot more, as I've been very faithful up until this point. With the proper start of the race coming, i'm going to have a little fun with it.**

 **I've decided I want to work semblances into the story in some way. I decided the best way to do that, would be to tie them into the users stand. I don't want to give any examples, or it would give some of the tricks away, but a few of the arcs get to go crazy because of that. This means that characters without a stand, or without a corpse part, don't get to use their semblances at all however. So some of the more abusive ones don't get triggered because of that, but what previously was a minor villain can turn into a nightmare with their semblance. If you've noticed, one character already has his stand, hinted at but still not revealed fully in this point of the story. I'll get the next chapter up late tonight, hopefully. I'm going to try doing one a day, in exchange for having these relatively short chapters (but still 2000 word) chapters.**

 **Hope you enjoyed, and if you didn't, better suck it up, buttercup.**


	4. Chapter 4

**This time, the race starts proper. I realized I never really explained how I format this story, so I should probably explain it now.** **Italics mean two things in this story. Usually, I use them to symbolize thought, as in the character is thinking that directly, but sometimes I use them to put emphasis or slant on a single word. This chapter was another two parter, it combines chapters 5 and 6 of the manga. Chapter six wasn't too big on dialogue, so it was easy to put on.**

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"With over 3,600 horses, and a four kilometer starting line, the first stage of the Steel Ball Run has begun. The Steel Ball Run race spans an expansive length, from San Diego to New York City, the Pacific to Atlantic, and is roughly a 6,000 km trek. With such a great length, it has been divided into nine stages, each with checkpoints to ensure the rules are being followed, check ranking, and prizes for the highest rank of each checkpoint." Qrow repeats this for the umpteenth time, to yet another crowd of journalists. Honestly he wondered if there was ever an end to their masses. "This first stage is 15,000m to a cathedral up ahead, the prize for first place is $10,000 and a one hour time bonus." The journalists began to ramble among themselves, as prone to do.

Years of preparation has led to this moment. Even Qrow was getting a little excited over it all. After separating from the journalists, leaving a spokesperson to answer the questions, he took Ruby into their private train compartment, watching the race from the sidelines. Of course, right now he wanted nothing more than to just drink a little, and was even unscrewing the lid from his canteen before Ruby suddenly grew excited and shook him rapidly. "Uncle Qrow! Let me see your binoculars! Fast fast fast! There's someone who separated from the pack!" To affirm her claims, he looked outside the window. She was right, someone did separate, but he couldn't recognize them from this range. _What an idiot, he's going to tire his horse out so fast. Doesn't he understand he only has one horse for two months?_ Qrow had kept a checklist on the most notable racers, so he should be able to recognize them. Succumbing to Ruby's pleading, he pulls out his binoculars and looks at the racer, to discover that it's not a he, but a… she?

The racer was most definitely female all right, he scrolled through his memory and remembered her to be on his list. "Yang Zeppeli", Qrow didn't really know much about her at all, but was suggested to put her on simply due to her foreign stature, and the scene she had caused outside of the registration tent. Qrow passed the binoculars to Ruby, "What the? It's a girl! Yay! She's not slowing down in any case. Actually she looks to be getting… faster?"

Jaune, even crippled as he was, had been a professional jockey, and a great one at that. He was at the front of the pack, looking at the back of the stunning lady that held the secret to him walking. _That horse. It's Australian, an Australian stock. They're known for their brilliant stamina._ _Is she trying to rely on it?_ The first stage was far too long though, 15,000 meters, that sort of speed is to be expected in the last few thousand, but what the hell was Yang thinking? She did seem to be pretty brash, but Yang wasn't dumb, at least as far as he knew. _Yang said she was going to win, to be the champion, so wha-_.

The thought was interrupted as a horse behind him suddenly began rushing to Jaune's side. There was no way he was going to fall for that, Jaune was a professional, but was still nervous at the prospect. He remembered the first time he had been charged in a race, luckily his horse withstood it, but he was terrified.

 _Not the time to be afraid! I gotta keep calm, deep breaths_. Jaune moved out the way, weaving in front of the charger. However, it was too late for the charger to stop, and he collided with the person to the other side of Jaune. He looked back for a second and saw them both sprawled over the floor with a mix of blood and dirt everywhere. Jaune looked forward, swallowing back the bile. He was still not used to the site of blood, no matter what insanity he had put himself through earlier today, or what was on his face now. _Poor fellows.._ Completely ignoring the fact that he had just barely avoided a similar fate.

There was no time to continue feeling bad for the racers, however, as he noticed someone else had sped up in front of him, seemingly pursuing Yang. Jaune had seen the picture in photos, and she was as beautiful as he had ever imagined. Flowing long black hair, that somehow maintained it's shape even at this high speed, and a beautiful red dress, with gold highlights that displayed her majesty without question. To call the woman a well known racer was a _severe_ understatement. That embodiment of beauty was," The Queen of British Horse riding", but other than that she was extraordinarily famous and talented, Jaune knew little but her name, Cinder Fall.

They had begun leaving the sandy expanse of the beach and were now entering an area with a little bit more foliage. Trees and bushes began to appear, and the land stopped being so flat. Suddenly, a _third_ person leaves the pack, but he didn't recognize this one at all. They looked focused and calm, but out of the blue their face took a fierce expression as they accelerated towards Yang.

Yang took this in stride, looking back and waving at the new challenger, this served only to anger him more though. Jaune was still in the pack, albeit in the front, and he thought he would be for quite a while, let them all rough it out. Cinder was keeping her distance, however, she was pretty far to the right of Yang, and a little behind as well. The strange challenger to Yang however began charging and smashing into her.

 _What the- How horrible! Is it worth risking death just to get a few meters?_ The first charge had little effect, but the second showed more. Yang was losing speed, not too much, but a noticeable amount for Cinder to begin to take advantage and push forward. Yang pulled out a steel ball, spun it, and threw it in an arc to a location Jaune couldn't see from back there. She was in trouble, but she seemed to be having a great time with it all. Suddenly, she weaved off the cleared path, and into a route filled with trees. _She'll get injured! There's too many trees to weave between_.

The two, challenger and Yang were neck and neck. Suddenly, Yang leaned heavily to one side, and they went even further off. The challenger, now desperate to be in front of Yang, suddenly.. _Lunged_ in front of her. Yang waved, again, as if to signal goodbye to the previous hello, and the challenger began laughing, before realizing he had just run face first into a bunch of cactus.

 _What the.. Where were the cactus hidden?_ Yang took back on the beaten path, and as Jaune had passed the place where the challenger had fallen, she saw a little bit of smoldering on the rocks by the cacti. Dusty sand was coming out of it, covering the cacti in a thin layer, acting as a smokescreen.

The screen was suddenly lifted, however, as a steel ball came out of it and returned to Yang's hand. _Yang did that? Oh man, that was pretty intense. At least the guy isn't hurt, just knocked out._ Or at least Jaune hoped the guy wasn't hurt. No time to worry though, the race needed his undivided attention at the moment. This was one of the shorter, if not the shortest stage in the race, and every second was going to count.

 _Was the whole race going to be this intense?_ They hadn't even been going for 1,000 meters, and someone was already out of the running. They could've been a major threat as well, if they were so skilled as to keep up with Yang. They had gotten past the little cluster of trees for now at least, though. Cinder had stopped accelerating and was now maintaining a constant speed, and Yang hadn't slowed down a single bit since the encounter with the cacti.

The distance between Yang and the group, however. hadn't stopped growing, now it was 400 meters and it wasn't going to stop there. The area they were in was vast and open, and the luxuriously dressed woman looked noble from the distance, her golden hair flowing. Cinder was a sight for the eyes as well, not losing any of her elegance or grace from the moment she pulled ahead. _Cinder's acting sort of strange, though._

In the past thirty seconds or so, the mannerisms of the racer called "Cinder Fall" had changed tremendously. She kept zig and zagging her horse, to the right a little, to the left a little, every few seconds. _What is she doing?_ In all his years of horse riding, he'd never seen anything as strange as this. However, what was even stranger, as that every time she did it, he noticed her distance to Yang grew smaller and smaller. _She's catching up!_

Cinder moved her horse to the right, her expression not one of excitement, but one of focus. She locked eyes with the racer in front of her, who she understood to be Yang Zeppeli. After the stunt in front of the registration tent, she had learned the name and made sure to keep an eye on her. _That obviously didn't go to waste,_ she thought to herself with a little smirk, before dipping her horse a little to the left.

It was tough to surprise Cinder Fall, but even she had to admit it was unexpected for Yang's challenger to suddenly go crashing into cacti. _No matter, he was simply a small fry, and it doesn't affect my plans._ The distance between her and the blonde woman was significantly smaller than it had been, and she dashed left, gaining a little more ground. _Just one more time, maybe, and i'll be next to that obnoxious thorn in my side._ She waited for her opportunity, and dashed. "Wait what, Where's Cinder?" She heard a very… _surprised_ Yang call out before looking beside her.

"Hello Miss Zeppeli", Cinder laughed toward Yang, as she looked at Cinder in awe, as if she was some sort of magical witch. The look wasn't one she was unused to, especially during a race. In fact, sometimes she made active efforts to drive it out of people. "I'm going to let you in on a little secret, Miss Zeppeli, every single thing has habits. Machines, Animals, People, they all have habits. Horses are no exception."

Yang was still shell shocked enough that she could only open her mouth in surprise, but no words came out. Cinder saw this silence as a prompt to continue, not that she needed one. "Some horses may always shake their head before charging, some may change their stride when approached by other horses, there's an infinite amount. So, let me tell you the habit of your horse. Every eight breaths, it sways to the left, and naturally, it loses speed."

Cinder counted, five, six, seven, eight. "Sway to the left". As if under command, Yang's horse did, and all that was left for her to do was to accelerate whenever Yang's lost speed. This stops her horse from tiring out, and allows her to catch up at only the most opportune times. They had just entered the bridge, the 12,000 meter remaining mark. There was still a lot to go, but she had to make every advantage she had count.

As she swayed again, she finally surpassed Yang, who had finally collected herself to speak. "You mean _my_ horse, Valkyrie, has a running habit? No way in hell." Cinder began to question why she had even bothered to explain, and couldn't find a reason other than to be smug about it. "It's the technique of a professional, to take advantage of these habits. You race like a child who stole his father's saddle in the night. Stay in the back where you belong. Habits can't be fixed, like fate."

 _Who in the hell is she?_ Yang hadn't lost faith in her horse whatsoever. Not to mention, calling her a kid? Honestly, who the hell WAS she? Yang leaned close to her horse's ear. "You have habits? What sort of habits buddy?" This time, even she noticed it when her horse leaned to the left, and that arrogant Cinder surpassed her even further. "We got a lot of stiff competition, but trust me, you don't gotta fix your habits."

Yang reached for her steel balls, "In fact, just accept your habits, and fully embrace them." She threw both her steel at opposite sides of the horse's flank. Suddenly, the horse explosively swayed to the left and jumped with an intense strength. The jump was enough to shatter the wooden planks of the bridge they were riding on! _Hm, so swaying to the left is your habit! Well comeon, Valkie, let it explode!_

 _Just like my legs!_ Jaune thought. Spending his life in the professional horse racing world, Jaune too knew how to read habits. However, he wasn't able to fully exploit them to the same extent he saw Cinder doing. However, the steel balls brought out the horse's habits in full strength, moving the horse in a similar way to how his legs had moved.

Looking at, Cinder Fall, Jaune saw she was trapped on the bridge, blocked off from moving forward. Standing still like she had no idea what to do, the pack began to pass her. _She got sort of screwed...I got to move up though, now's my chance!._ Jaune thought as he kept pressing forward

Neptune had just woken up, and oh what a wonderful rest he had. Crawling out of his tent, he felt great. In fact, he felt like he could take on the world! "Ah man, i'm ready for the race at ten, finally. World, get ready for the glory of Neptune to grace your presence." Looking around him though, the tents were all abandoned, and all he could see was the little midget that registered him drinking some coffee by a corral.

Beads of sweat began to run down Neptune's face as he approached the little man. "U-Uh, what time is it?" Neptune mumbled. The answer only served to confirm his fears. He remembered what his grandmother had told him, that this was the best period of his life, and put faith in it as he instantly sprinted off onto his horse.

Well, wasn't true, he had stopped by the noodle house. After all, he can't race on an empty stomach. Luck was with him too! They gave him free noodles, since they had gone unsold. After finishing up there, Neptune hopped on his horse, and began galloping on the path.

"What the? Why is this path so easy?" It felt like the easiest ride Neptune had ever done, though that wasn't saying much. "Did it rain?" He asked, looking at the clear blue sky. He wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he soon enough, Neptune put two and two together, "Ah. I know! Since everyone's already galloped on past here, it made it way easier for me!" In fact he was travelling even faster than Yang had at the time. "Watch out world, I'm on a roll!"

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 **Poor little Neptune, oversleeping. The meat of the race is coming up, and Yang managed to get her way out of a tough situation with Cinder. Speaking of Cinder, what a fun little character to write. I ignored little Jaune a bit near the end, he had some bits of dialogue, but I decided they weren't worth changing perspective for. He's got a long way to go if he wants to catch up to little Miss Fall. I don't even know if he can bring himself to fight Cinder, or anyone really. I purposefully wrote Jaune more sensitive this chapter, truer to his RWBY character, rather than the little prick Johnny is.**

 **I did this chapter a little earlier today than normal, mostly because I was too impatient to wait, this chapter really shows off Gyro/Yang's ingenuity, both with Avdol (Who I just left unnamed) and the bit with the bridge.**

 **I might feel like even writing another chapter today, but i'd probably publish it tomorrow. Publishing at 1am as I did with ch2 is a pretty poor idea, which is why I published ch3 this morning, rather than last night when I finished it. So this is _technically_ the second chapter released today. Hey, works for me.**

 **Review if you liked it, or not, but you probably should, just in case :^)**


	5. Chapter 5

**Another two part chapter. I'm not sure how I feel about this one, it feels a little worse in quality. Neptune's fun to write, but the perspective changes so much in these two chapters, which looks fine art wise, but when you slap it into writing, going from something that Jaune is saying when you're in the perspective of Yang, who would have no way to hear him from all the way up there, and then to Neptune, then to Sandman, then to some random racers, it got a little tiring and I think the quality dropped this chapter. Oh well, next chapter i'll probably upload around 7-8pm Central time tonight.**

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"What the hell? If i'm meant to be lucky, then why did I oversleep on the day of my race?" Neptune finally asking the obvious question, "But man oh man, this ground is _fast_ , and I mean FAST fast, i'm goin' at the speed of sound! I can take on the world!" Due to the thousands of horses previously trampling the ground he was now riding on, it allowed his own horse to pick up insane speed.

"Are those the other racers?!" They had to be, at long last he caught up to the pack, well, at least the very BACK of the pack. Scenery zooming by, absolutely nothing could stop Neptune. He was on autopilot at this point, following racers and passing them up. That is, until he reached a cliff.

"Wait what the?" Neptune suddenly found himself zooming towards a canyon, with no way across to the other side, the other racers were as well, but they looked equally confused. Confusion turned to awe, however, as they saw a man, rather, a faunus jump off the side and managed to partially leap across the expanse. The faunus looked as if he were about to fall down, but grabbed the other side and began… climbing?

"That god damned Faunus led us here on purpose!" Screams of anger came out from the other racers. _Maybe my luck is really screwed up… why would I be in a dead end?_ As other racers began to turn around, cursing fate. Neptune had to decide if he was going to really put his faith on luck, or go the safe route.

Hell no. He came from Georgia, if he wasn't lucky, he wouldn't have caught up, he wouldn't be anywhere close to where he is now, in fact, he'd be walking home, tail between his legs. No, Neptune was many things, but right now, he was _lucky!_ Rather than slowing down, he sped up with a cry of "Grandma, I believe!".

The racers who were trying to get back on course turned around to see the blue haired farm boy streak across the cliff, his brown horses hair flowing, and the his racing number "777" plastered on the side of his saddle. Even the climbing faunus stared in silent awe.

"I'll win this race, and live a happier life!" Neptunes battle yell, turned to horror as he realized he was just a little short, as the faunus had been. There was little time to think, for in a few seconds he would be plummeting towards death.

"Use your rope, if you have one." The faunus gave some parting advice, before continuing climbing. _Rope…?_ Rope! He had a rope! Quickly and loosely wrapping it around the horn of his saddle, he threw the rope to a small pillar of rock near the top.

It hooked around and his horse began running up the side of the cliff, as Neptune pulled with all his strength. His his horse neighed, but they were both relieved as they pushed across the edge of the cliff, and continued running.

It was just him and the faunus now, running across the rocky expanse. Or at least it had been. _I can see the pack!_ "Thank you faunus!" His grandma also taught him to thank good fortune, or it would disappear, after all that happened, he was in no position to start questioning her teachings.

"Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" A triumphant roar louder than the trampling of horses shook the will of the racers enough to turn their heads to Neptune, zooming past them all. "Comeonnnnnn buddy! Your racing is SLOPPY!"

Jaune now saw a distinctive sign with the number "six" on it, and the steel ball run logo. _Only 6,000 meters left, we're getting closer every second_. Yang was still leagues ahead of everyone else, Jaune estimated she was around 168 meters ahead. _Man, she looks like a goddess._ The blonde hair flowing through the wind really served to push that thought in Jaune's mind.

Separated from the rest of the pack, Yang really looked to be in her own tier, a step above everyone else. No one could even approach her, as if she emitted a force field that stopped anyone from contesting her position in first.

 _Her horse will begin to tire soon._ That fact was undeniable. Just under 2,000 meters was the right time to start speeding up your horse for the finish. _If I lose her now though, I don't think i'll ever catch up. If I ever want her to teach me the secret, that spin, I need to beat her, and my only chance is in the last 2,000!_

Time wasn't on Jaune's side, though. While combing his mind for little edges and advantages he could get, the Zeppeli suddenly veered right. _What the?_ _That leads right into a mess of trees._ Jaune confused, not for the first time this day, and most definitely not for the last.

Rather than sticking to the beaten path, was going to challenge her skill by trying to maneuver through trees. If she succeeded, she'd have a huge distance advantage over the rest of the racers.

 _She's going to take a shortcut! No no no no no no no._ This spun all of Jaune's idea out of whack. _Is she crazy? There's a huge risk of hurting your horse, or hurting yourself! I won't let her hurt herself like that! If she falls, I gotta be there!_

Without hesitating, Jaune ran off into the brush. At the same time, he was joined by a grinning blue haired racer, they shared a glance, before putting their eyes back on the tough route in front of them.

Yang easily dodged the branches that were defending the entrance to the forest. Blazing her own path, she continued moving, weaving left and right, up and down, and moving her horse as well. Suddenly, she disappeared from Jaune's vision, concealed by the mess of bushes.

The aqua haired racer beside Jaune suddenly… closed his eyes? _Man, this race is getting weirder by the second. Strange forest routes, strange steel balls, standing, now this guy is closing his eyes?_

Even when they entered the forest, the man who looked like a rejected blue man group member didn't open his eyes! Jaune was too preoccupied to continue caring, though. Racers behind him dropping like flies, and branches in front of him threatening to succumb him to the same fate.

The racers that tried to fight the branches were met with failure. _You can't fight nature in a place like this._ Jaune, born and raised in an outdoors environment, understood that you to try resisting would lead to instant death.

No, the only hope was to go with it and dodge, and dodge he would, dropping flat to get underneath a particularly low branch. The man to his side had still not opened his eyes. _I hope he doesn't get hurt, but I need to get past him!_ Jaune sped up his horse, and let himself have a little smile of victory as he got past the closed eyed racer.

When you're in a forest on a horse, there are bound to be some gaps that are too big for you to pass, but just the right size for a horse. In a racing scenario, these paths can be the difference between winning or losing. However, they are no use to the rider, as by definition, they cannot pass through.

However, if the rider were to fall, and go through the path, he might find himself significantly farther ahead than going through the normal route. Neptune was greeted to a wake up call, as his throat was crushed by a branch. Blood spewed out of his mouth.

 _But… But i'm lucky…_ Neptune, in an image unlike the one Jaune was in earlier that day, was being dragged by the stirrups on his horse. The branches were tearing up his clothes, and the rocks were tearing up his face. There was no doubt, Neptune was going to die like this unless something changed.

His horse, without a rider, suddenly went off onto some random path. Neptune was now free from the view of Jaune or anyone else, and managed to flip onto his back. He wasn't in as much pain now, but his back was being scratched up to no end, travelling at such high speeds.

Nothing could have prepared him for what happened next however, Neptune suddenly found himself behind Yang. Still a distance away from her, but significantly closer than Jaune was. By sheer chance, Neptune's horse had gone through a path no other rider could.

Neptune appeared to Jaune again. Jaune had been intensely worried for the poor rider, so it was both relief and shock to see him okay. These emotions were both replaced with confusion and anger. How did Neptune get in front of Jaune, who had rode so well to get to this point?

Even Yang was confused. She expected the horse coming out of the brush to just be a runaway horse, one without a rider, so she let out a "What the hell?" to seeing Neptune being pulled by the stirrups. The image of Jaune flashed in her head, him having been in such a similar situation, but she shook it out of her mind.

This was the race now, she had no time to worry about Jaune. If he wanted to understand, he would have to find her. However, as she turned back around to look at the trail in front of her, trees blocked the path. There would be no dodging through those, she would have to get rid of them.

Yang pulled at her steel balls, placed them in the palm of either hand, and they began to spin as she threw them in a pincer fashion towards the trees, one hitting the trees on the left, and one hitting the trees on the right.

Rather than break down the trees, this little stunt Yang had pulled bent them down. Not permanently, but like a palm tree in a storm, bending with the force of the wind. This gave her just enough time to pass through them, and that she did.

For little Neptune, who was stuck behind Yang, the trees began to snap back into position, as this happened the two green balls rushed back to her side. Neptune still hadn't regained his spot on the horse, and couldn't direct it anywhere, and so was faced to go through the brush. The space was big enough for the horse to pass through.

Neptune, of course could pass through as well, but he would be lucky to be alive. Travelling at such high speeds on horse, while smashing into multiple trees was a death sentence for almost anybody.

Yet, as he has proven multiple times today, Neptune wasn't "almost anybody." He had that one in a billion luck. The trees that had begun to snap back hadn't quite fully done so yet, and in the nick of time, Neptune was in position as they snapped back.

Normally, this would have been extremely painful, and probably broke his ribs. It still was painful, but the snap back of the trees pushed Neptune back onto his horse, and that was worth any pain.

Yang had slipped out of the forest without so much as a scratch, she was in tip top condition. Looking to her left, she saw the people who went the safe route. If she had to estimate, she would guess that she was roughly 800 meters in front of them all. That was worth a little trip through the forest.

What she hadn't expected, though, is for a strange blue haired man to come out a few seconds after her. _Wasn't he sprawling on the ground?_ _How'd he get back on his horse. Hell, how'd he survive?_

The little unexpected variable that was Neptune was NOT 800 meters away, in fact, it was just around 12 meters away at most, and getting closer with every second!

"I got hit by a tree branch and it put me back on my horse! I really am the luckiest man in the world!" Neptune couldn't help but cheer after all that happened. There was no doubting it, he was lucky, and it wasn't all coincidence.

 _Who in the world is this guy? I really don't get how he could go through all that and STILL be fine._ Yang continued zooming on her horse out of the forest, now was not the time to slow down. She saw a sign that held a red "4" alongside with the steel ball run logo. This meant she was only 4,000 meters away from winning. After all, she was Yang Zeppeli, there was no doubt that she was going to win.

* * *

 **I don't really like this whole forest scene, a lot of weird stuff happens. When writing it out, I felt like I was writing a weird story a little kid version of me would imagine. Specifically the whole "branch snaps back to knock Neptune on his horse part." Now, I know Neptune is well, of course meant to be insanely lucky here, but it felt like a weird cop out to have him back on his horse. Hey, it's a _Bizarre_ adventure for a reason I guess. I can't wait for us to get past this little first stage. I was considering going on and finishing the stage, but that would have been putting FOUR chapters in this one, alongside me getting a little tired out over it.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Woah, finally we're coming to the close of the first stage of the Steel Ball Run race, and who will win? I felt a lot better about this chapter, compared to the last one. This chapter is also a THREE PART chapter, adapting three chapters of the manga.**

* * *

Out of the forest and back on the course, the runners now face a steep downhill. In horse riding, to go all out during a downhill is to spell certain defeat. What happens is that the horse becomes too tired to continue for after the downhill, so no matter how tempting it must seem, runners must always remember to restrain themselves and pace their horses. The wind was unusually strong this day.

Which is what Yang was doing, Valkyrie was already more stressed than usual from the forest, sprinting down the decline would have given her much greater harm than good. A few amateurish racers did try to sprint in the beginning of the decline, but their horses all tumbled over and they would be lucky to have not gotten trampled.

However, most of Yang's attention right now was on this new, blue haired boy who had come up behind her. _Who even is this kid? I didn't make any mistakes crossing the forest, so there's no way he should have caught up so fast._

Yang leaned over to whisper in horse's ear, "Comeon buddy, you gotta keep strong, once we get down this and by that farm over there, i'll let you show them why we're going to win."

Neptune however, had no worries. Still on the high of getting back on his horse, he resigned himself to his luck. _I'm Neptune, who the hell is gonna mess with me at this point?_

What Neptune did have to worry about, is that someone answered his question. "Neptune, what the hell are you saying? You aren't going to win off goodwill alone."

To Neptune's right, hanging on to a fence, was a strange, over sized… thing. It looked a bit like a witch doctor, although without the recognizable beak, replaced with weird stitching. It wore a full purple body suit, along with what looked to be a sack over it's head. The sack was adorned with little green feathers across the rim, and green dreadlocks coming off the back.

"There's a sled coming up, look at it Neptune." Neptune still couldn't believe his eyes, much less look at whatever the thing was directing him towards. It was showing him a strange scenario. "Don't get distracted! Now is not the time! You are the man with insane luck, aren't you?"

"What in the hell. Did I hit my head when I fell down? Is this is a hallucination?" Again, to Neptune's surprise, the strange creature responded. "Yeah, i'm a hallucination. In any case, I need you to trust me. Go downhill at the fastest speed possible, you're lucky aren't you? It will work out, you can beat that blonde loon that's getting in your way."

Suddenly, a weird hand appeared out of Neptune's own. Surprisingly, Neptune found himself able to control the hand as well, willing it to disappear back into his own. Not quite sure what's going on, Neptune took a good, long, hard look at his own hands before deciding to put his faith in the creature.

After all, today had been a strange enough day already, what did he have to lose by trusting some demon that had come to haunt him?

"You! Blondie! In the front! I'm telling ya' now, and i'm only gonna tell you once. When I pass you, you'll never catch up!" Neptune yelled out towards the leather clad racer in front of him.

It took a bit, but much to his chagrin, she turned around and grinned at him. _What the hell is that on her teeth?_ "Buddy, buddy, buddy, I need you to talk to me face to face here, not into my back. Although that may be a little hard, seeing as you're stuck in second."

"Better get out of my way then!" Suddenly, Neptune accelerated as fast as his horse allowed, bring a surprised yell from Jaune for the hundredth time that day, and even an angry glare from Yang.

Yang knew to hold back, and so she did. She didn't know much about that weird blue haired kid, but she did know that if she accelerated here, she could kiss first place goodbye.

Jaune held back as well. Such a move was a death sentence for anyone, no matter how skilled they were. _I hope he doesn't get trampled when he falls._

Two racers who had accelerated to match Neptune were now just behind Yang, before both of their horses suddenly tripped, and they began rolling down the hill. Their fates were not one to be envied, there was a very high chance they would die.

The other racers wouldn't stop, and if they happened to be in the way, then their lives and not just the race would end here for them. Even Yang felt the situation to be regrettable, but she wasn't exactly about to turn around and help two people who had brought themselves into the situation, especially since she would get trampled herself.

Jaune, however, was not about to allow them to die. He wasn't too far behind them to begin with. Jaune quickly grabbed his rope from the back of the saddle, and threw it on both of them, who had luckily been rolling very close together. _I'll just throw them over the fence, just enough so they don't die!_

It would cost him a little bit of awareness though, and other horses began passing Jaune Joestar. _I don't care if I get passed, i'm not going to let them die for no reason!_ Jaune had never been particularly strong with his upper body, and this came into crippling light at this moment.

He couldn't pick them up, and any second now, they would be trampled to death. Various curse words began zooming through Jaune's head, he couldn't forgive himself if they died at this moment.

Suddenly, a steel ball had hit Jaune's arm, spinning it in such a fashion as to force his arm to pick them up, with the strength of the steel ball. Before Jaune could so much as blink, the two racers were over the fence. Bleeding, but alive.

"Thank you, Yang!" Jaune screamed this out, not sure if it would reach her ears. To his surprise, she looked back, and he could see those "Go Go Zeppeli!" teeth once more, alongside a purple gloved thumbs up.

The steel ball returned to Yang. After all the 'I can't help them', she decided to throw the steel ball. _At that point, I would've been killing them if I didn't throw the ball._ She had never met the racers in her life, but Yang Zeppeli was not the type of person to allow others to die meaninglessly, even if it had been their fault. The strong wind blew her hair, making her saving act look even more angelic.

Suddenly, the blue haired boy who had grown long past her came crashing down. She was right not to accelerate to catch up to him.

With that little nuisance out of the running, she was back in the lead, wasn't she? She was, so why was the place where he had fallen still moving… and why were there skid marks going on behind it?

 _Oh come on, come ON!_ _How the hell did he do that?_ The kid, on his horse again, was sliding down on a cross country sled that had been left on the top of the hill. _He's either an intense dumb ass, or just the smartest man on earth!_

"That was no hallucination! There was a sled in the grass! Helllllll Yeah!" Neptune was many things and lucky was one. Since his horse was on the sled and they were sliding down, his horse was resting and didn't need to work at all. He would be fully rested and ready for the final 2,000. Nobody's going to stop good old Neptune now.

That is, before a strange steel ball came and hit a boulder to his left, shattering it into hundreds of pieces. _That'll get rid of that sled,_ Yang thought. However, in another stunning display of variance, a faunus came out and jumped on a bit of broken rock that was about to collide and take out the sled, changing it's direction and giving him a sprinting start.

 _Isn't that the faunus I helped earlier? Where's his horse?_ Yang considered herself a fast sprinter, back in her homeland, she had participated in racing throughout her youth. The faunus was something else, he was outrunning horses. _What in the- Why doesn't he have a horse! Why is that man on a sled! What the hell is going on with this race!_

As they reached flat lands, Neptune now jumped off the sled, unaffected by the boulders, his horse running at a fully rested, top speed. However, they couldn't surpass Adam, who was not just keeping up with the horses, but growing faster than them with every step.

Adam zoomed off over hills, this was his advantage over the horses, outside of his speed, he could cross terrain that they couldn't with ease. In what some would call 'true faunus nature', but what he called 'ingenuity', he climbed up hills with every bit of his body on all fours as a cougar or lion would.

The Steel Ball Run race is an all land race, Adam would have the entire world on his side, able to cross terrain and find his own shortcuts, blaze his own trails, and take the money for his tribe.

 _What in the hell is this race. How is this guy ahead of me? And he's rested for 1000m… This isn't lookin' too hot. He got past the forest, he got past the swinging branches, he got on a god damned SLED, he caught up to me from hundreds of meters behind, something has GOT to be helping him. There is no way in hell he's doing this all alone._

The little witch doctor voodoo hybrid… thing, was back on Neptune's shoulders. Surprisingly, he felt no weight at all. "Neptune, buddy, for the rest of this race and your life, i'll protect you from everything. Just push on forward with all your speed, do whatever you want, there's nothing but luck left for you!"

"Damn it!" Yang let out a pointless yell. "Valkyrie, you've been a sprinter for as long as I've known you, I don't know what we can do, but there's no way in hell we're going to win like this. Let's move on!"

The Zeppeli sped up tremendously and surpassed Neptune. _This may be a little early, but I got to do this now or never!_ Once the corner is turned, there's a straight away, and even right now, there's only a little less than 1,500 meters left.

They finally turned the corner, Yang only a few feet ahead of Neptune. Upon turning the corner, their senses are barraged from every angle. The smell of food, the sound of a parade, music playing, colors everywhere, flags waving.

Thousands of people came to cheer on the racers. _They all came to see us, eh? Just another reason I can't lose._ Yang was never one to be afraid of crowds, especially ones that were cheering her name. At least, she had hoped that was her name.

Qrow and Ruby were still spectating from their little train compartment, each having their own shares of gasps and laughter throughout the race. This however, took the cake. "What in the- There's easily more than 20,000 people here, maybe more than 30,000. Were this many people really interested in the race?"

"Uncle Qrow, how did you get all these people here?" "I didn't, Ruby, I had no idea they would be here." Ruby, in typical overdramatic fashion, almost spit out her milk. "This is CRAZY Uncle Qrow! We did it! You did it! We finally made our goals come true! But with all these people watching, the winner of the race is going to be a frigging hero! You should have let me compete."

"Yeah, even though you're two years under the minimum age, and have never ridden a horse in your life." This prompted pouting. "I may be two years under the age, but I'll look 16 soon enough. That's why I drink milk." She smiled proudly, pointing towards her glass.

Jaune, as he was known for in races, began speaking to his horse. "You ran amazing. I couldn't have asked for a better horse." The horse, even running in such high speeds, could take delight in such praise.

"You've gained loads of experience here too, through the forests, rough ground, and downhill." The praise only served to further motivate the horse in the way that only 'Rookie' could.

"And even if you may be a little sweaty, your legs are perfectly fine!" A little was a severe understatement, the horse was drenched, but his words were true, it's legs weren't tired from the race.

"You're breathing is also in tip top shape. You're doing leagues better than anyone else by us. So comeon, together, let's surprise Yang! She's gotta be getting tired at this point, and we can take her down!"

Just as he began to accelerate, Jaune saw something that he knew could not have existed. The familiar red and gold dress of Cinder Fall was there, in the corner of Jaune's eye.

 _It's unbelievable, she really is the queen! How did she pull up from all the way back there!_ _He caught up to me! No no no! Cinder CANNOT catch up to me! How did she even get this far up after the destruction of the bridge? Now is not the time for Cinder to come up!_

Jaune, having lived a life in professional horse riding as well, knew when someone was reading habits. That wasn't what Cinder was doing now, though. What Cinder was doing, was using the bodies of racers beside her, to shield her own horse from the wind.

This allowed her to bypass the loss of speed due to wind resistance and allowed her to continue without a little bit of fatigue which could be the difference between first and second.

 _Is she going to use my horse as a shield as well?_ _I won't let her! I've already decided i'm going to beat Yang!_

However, Yang had her own issues. The final stretch still had just under a thousand meters left, and Neptune was challenging her. Twisting her body around to look behind her, Neptune was speeding up.

She also saw something she didn't expect to see. A boy with a star spangled blue outfit, with his horseshoe beanie. Slightly behind him was… Cinder fall? When did she get back up here? _Just when I thought this couldn't get worse. I'm Yang Zeppeli, I am going to win!_

Things were going even worse for Jaune Joestar, however. Try as he might, he couldn't shake Cinder. She kept blocking the wind with his horse and he couldn't stop it at all. _She's going to let me lead, before passing me at the end. That's her end game._

 _But there is NO WAY that is happening! Yang's horse is already nearing exhaustion, and if anyone, ANYONE in this race is going to beat Yang Zeppeli, it's going to be me!_

"I'm sorry, Cinder!" Jaune's horse moved it's head down, sinking into the ground, prompting a raising of eyebrows from the British race goddess. Jaune sped up, and kicked up some rocks. Jaune felt absolutely terrible about having to resort to such dirty tricks, but it was the only way he was going to break the windshield and get ahead.

 _Was this kid a professional?_ Cinder couldn't help but think. _How did he get that sort of skill?_ She took a long good look at the star clothed racer who had just performed such a technique, before her face struck with surprise. _I'm really getting sick of all these surprises today_ , _who knew that little Jaune Joestar, the cripple, would be here._

She didn't know too much about Jaune, but it shook the international horse racing community when he turned cripple. _Are you meaning to tell me that i'm losing to a cripple who fell from grace? How low I've fallen._ _Technique is going to mean nothing from here, everyone is going all out. It's all on my horse's legs._

Neptune was pushing forward, when his little witch doctor buddy came back from nowhere. "Hey, Hey Neptune buddy! Go left. Now! There isn't much time!" Neptune, still not used to him being around, stuttered out "O-Ok, but i'm lucky right? I'll be golden if I go left?"

"Yeah! Just say 'Yo yo yo!' as you go left". Neptune had grown to trust his weird little spirit buddy, and followed its instruction. Rushing to the left, Neptune let out a "Yo! Yo! Yooooo!"

As he went to the left, suddenly Adam came down from the cliffs, around twenty feet ahead of Yang. There were no shortcuts left for Adam, though, it was just legs vs horse. Yang kept up her pace, but now Cinder and Jaune were coming up from behind.

They were only maybe 40 feet away from Yang, but the race only had maybe 300 meters left. The distance was closing rapidly though, _I can beat Yang!_ For the first time this race, the goal had seemed finally attainable to Jaune.

Yang was only 24 feet away from Adam and getting faster, but Neptune was still threatening her from the left. Little Miss Fall had come back to haunt her, and Jaune had come out of the woodwork to threaten her as well.

They all lined up, the four leading racers were now all lined up within the race, chasing after Adam. Side by side, Jaune, Yang, Cinder, and Neptune.

Adam was not a man to pray, nor was he a man to hope. Adam had but two goals in life, to save his tribe, and to earn the faunus respect, one way or another.

 _Tribe, I may have abandoned you, and you may not ever accept me again. But for the spirits of you, and for the spirits of my ancestors, and for every single faunus on this cruel Earth, I will win this blasted race. Give me your strength and courage!_

With only 100 meters left in the race, Adam speeds up again. The horses are all side by side, but Yang manages to get a small edge. The crowds are roaring so load, that it's hard for Yang to even hear herself thing. Suddenly, little Miss Fall surpassed her by just a little, before it goes back to Yang.

"Neptune, buddy, run forward and to the left a little, there's gonna be a dead tree. Jump on it!" Obeying without so much as questioning it this time, Neptune did as asked and jumped on the dead tree. It worked as a springboard and he now had a 10 foot lead over them all! "Thank you, my little spirit dude!"

A strong wind, that had been present all day, suddenly blew a large gust. Jaune thought nothing of it, until suddenly, Yang soared into the skies, somehow picking up speed as she did!? Every one of the other top five racers turned their heads in unison to observe a beautiful knight coming down on her horse from above.

With this, she surpassed Adam, she surpassed Neptune, hell, she surpassed them all! Even the crowd had a collective gasp and silence. Yang, still riding, turned around and looked specifically at Jaune.

"Jaune Joestar, you're absolutely insane. You went from sprawling on the ground, bleeding all over yourself, to coming here. But I have one question, have you ever rode a ship before? The more wind a boat can catch on it's sails, the faster it'll go. Check it out."

The 'Go Go Zeppeli!' teeth were shown again, but not in an arrogant smile, not in a proud smile, but in a smile that made Jaune's heart soar. Yang had somehow made her cloak into sails! By spinning them with the steel balls!

An announcer roared "Yang Zeppeli is in first! The champion is Yang Zeppeli, with a time of 18 minutes and 7 seconds!"

* * *

 **And there's the end of the first stage of the Steel Ball Run race. Those with experience with Jojo will recognize the strange little thing that's helping Neptune as a "Stand". It'll be the first, unless you count another one that we've mentioned a few times, but haven't shown in it's entirety. I added my own little bit to this chapter. The bit with Jaune saving the two racers who had fallen, that wasn't in the original, in fact they die in the original. They're nameless, and I wanted to contrast Jaune and Yang a little bit. Jaune, no matter what, wouldn't let two people die if he could do something about. Jaune was also a bigger prick to Neptune in SBR, but I didn't see him the type to say "good riddance" when Neptune got hit in the throat.**

 **I also had Yang help save the two men, because Yang is also the type to save them, she just needed a little push. Our little friend Cinder is back, she really is insane and out of this league. Jaune also finally got Yang to talk to him. I'm going to make a relatively medium tier change next chapter, since I didn't really like how it played out in the story itself.**

 **There is a half chapter after this one that doesn't expand the story, but it talks about the backstory of Stephen Steel and Lucy Steel, or in this case, Qrow and Ruby. I'm not sure if i'll write it, as it's a bit of a break from the "core" story, but i'll ask around and see what people want.**

 **Alright, that's enough writing for today. Another two chapter one day, and with my longest chapter yet! Leave a review if you liked it, or not.**


	7. Chapter 7

**This chapter is a little shorter than the rest, I didn't even get through the whole chapter in the manga. However I had less time to write today, and this was a great ending off point to put it at. The ending of this chapter in the manga is connected to the next chapter, and it made sense to make that one big chapter, rather than starting it here and ruining the ending and splitting it up.**

 **I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter, but I liked the changes I made. There were some narrative changes done, which you might recognize, but that's part of beauty of writing this.**

* * *

Flags from across the world, Italy, Germany, France, America, waved in unison as Yang Zeppeli passed the finish line in first place. Barely after Yang came Adam, who was absolutely winded for the first time in his life. In third, finished Cinder Fall, fourth came Neptune, who had lost confidence after Yang stole the lead from him with her little maneuver, fifth came an unheard of racer, "Sun Wukong" who stuck his horse's nose just past the place of sixth, Jaune Joestar.

 _Why. Why did I lose? I'm Neptune! No one beats Neptune! I'm the man who's meant to have "out of this world luck!" How did I lose? Why why why!_ Neptune had staked his entire life on this event, his dreams of getting out of a hard life seemed more unattainable by the minute.

 _I'm not.. I'm not first._ However different they may be, Cinder echoed the same thoughts as Neptune. The Queen of Horse riding was not first, she was not second, she was third. Cinder remembered the last time she got third, and that was for "Good Sportsmanship" in primary school.

Adam was not nearly as angry as the others. Every other stage of the race would favor him about all else, to be second in the first was only a minor setback, considering the Steel Ball Run race worked on a points system. First place got 100 points and a time bonus, alongside a small prize, second place got 50 points, third got 40 points, and gradually decreasing until 21st place.

In fact, Adam was more relieved the first stage was over. This was the first time Adam had lost a race, and he saw it as an opportunity to reflect on his goals before moving forward and to truly test his will.

The administration of the race, however, was in an absolute uproar over what happened. What Yang had done in the end was under fierce argumentation of it's legality. Qrow really didn't care too much either way, the rules had been lenient from the beginning, designed to bend to fit the candidate the media saw the most money for.

In fact, outside of alcohol, which he was currently celebrating with in disgusting amounts, the only thing that even vaguely worried Qrow was Yang Zeppeli. No one knew anything about her, she left the application blank except for necessary information.

However, it would still be wise to get someone to dig up something on little Yang. The media needed something to report after all, and if it wasn't Yang, it was going to be more talk about Qrow's alcoholism. Speaking of that, his canteen had just run dry.

Putting on his best sober face, he went to go find an officer to get him some more. After all, he was at the top of the totem pole, and why find things if you can make your unpaid interns find it for you. It was his genius idea to make them unpaid, by the way, added more to the booze budget.

Adding more to the booze budget turned out to be very smart indeed, celebrations were running high outside the cathedral. People were devouring the food, and due to certain... complications on his end, the only alcohol left was expensive champagne. _Eh, whatever, alcohol is alcohol._

As Yang arrived to the little feasting area near the cathedral, a light, weak hearted clap was held, before the guests and racers returned to convening between themselves. The party scene was her natural habitat, so she should have no problem drinking with the other racers until the sun came up.

That is, until she realized one crucial fact. The only alcohol being served was… Champagne? Left, right, forwards, backwards, underneath the tables, on the tables, hovering above the tables, why was it only champagne? _Who the hell only serves champagne at a party for cowboys and tough racers? What in the hell were the event staff thinking?_

 _Come ON! One of these tables has to have whiskey, doesn't it?_ _Beer? Gin? Vodka? Tequila? We're close enough to Mexico for tequila, right? Right?_ Worse yet, it was EXPENSIVE champagne. _This sort of junk costs $300 dollars per bottle, maybe, unbelievable, I could buy 60 bottles of beer!_

No. This was unacceptable. She toiled, TOILED in the race all for the hope of drinking, or was it to win? Yang really had no idea anymore, but was she meant to drink this drink like it was hard liquor?

Briefly exiting to catch her breath, and remove herself from such a stressful situation. It wasn't working, sweat was running down her face, and she kept clenching her fists, honestly, she cut an imposing figure if she did say so herself. But now was not the time for games! They had no LIQUOR!

Jaune Joestar was just observing the miniature panic attack the woman was having, unsure if he should call a doctor, but too frozen in place to comment on it either. Luckily, or unluckily depending on your perspective, she saw him first.

"Hey! Jauney boy! Watch this!" Yang had to get some form of revenge, this was inexcusable and she swore she would kill the man who did this to her. This was no way to treat your first place winner.

Yang marched right back into the banquet area, she pulled out a steel ball and slammed it on the grand table with the bottles of champagne, still unopened. She looked to the man who smelled of more types of alcohol than she knew the name to, who now had his eyes on her due to her little stunt with the steel ball.

Her eyes were now a fiery red, passion driving through her soul as she recognized the man as the organizer of the Steel Ball Run race event. "You.. It's YOUR fault that the only alcohol here is champagne!"

Qrow had a knack for knowing when things were about to go south, and his radar was blasting out of control. _Shit. This is not good. If I don't calm her down quickly, she'll kill us. Come on, what would a crazy alcoholic lady want?_

"All of the non celebration alcohol has been consumed by the guests. We're sorry, but we weren't expecting such a crowd." There was no way he could go wrong with the truth, right? That was probably the truth, anyway, he didn't know the truth, but it wasn't a lie if he didn't know he was lying.

"Oh. I see. That's why you smell like a cocktail of every obscure brew on Earth, but the rest of the site is as dry as the damned desert we just crossed. I mostly just came to cool off, don't worry about it. It's all in the past." This was surprisingly calm, and more passive aggressive than Qrow expected it to be.

Yang walked off, just about to turn a left back to her horse, and where she left Jaune Joestar. _3...2...1…_ _Blastoff, baby!_ Just as the guests went to reach for the champagne bottles to celebrate, all the corks suddenly exploded and the champagne began spraying everywhere.

It was an absolute shower, a shower that cost at least $10,000 dollars, but that's just the price you pay when you don't properly accommodate your racers, and instead just let the random guests drink it all. Qrow felt the urge to cry at the loss of such a large amount of alcohol, he felt it connected to that Zeppeli girl, somehow, some way, she must be to blame. _Always the blonde ones._ He felt he was forgetting something about the girl, _Oh right, I needed to learn her whole life story._ Qrow looked at the last safe bottle of Champagne. _Guess it's time to make buddy buddy with the interns again._

Jaune rode up into the banquet area to see what all the commotion was, to run straight into Yang, the girl he had sworn to beat. Suddenly, a random cork flew at him at speeds that no cork should travel. _What in the hell?_ Luckily, he managed to catch the cork, but without too much time to figure out what was happening, Yang directed him out. _Awh, I love champagne._

"Hey, Jauney boy, I got a question for you. How about… You come to the next stage with me?" Jaune had accounted for many possible situations, confronting Yang tonight about travelling together, with some spiel about safety in numbers, beating her in a race to get her recognition, but this was not one that he accounted for.

"Y-You're asking me? Me, the cripple, Jaune Joestar?" Yang replied. "Actually no, I was asking that random hermit who's been eyeing me for a while." Gesturing towards a dirty looking man standing by a shop corner, who was less than subtly staring at her chest.

The man of course, scurried off after being noticed. Yang thought to herself, _Who wouldn't notice when your eyes are glued to them_ , but left that out of her talking to Jaune, lest he start too. "Who else could I be asking, yes i'm asking you Jaune."

Finally steeling up his resolve, Jaune managed to squeak out "Y-Yeah! Of course!" Yang gave a sigh, "I sure hope you lighten up and stop being so stiff. The second stage is going to be a true desert crossing, not this wimp stuff we just did, 1,200 km of straight desert. You up for it?" A little more comfortable now, Jaune gave a much better response. "Born ready, Yang."

This of course, solicited laughter from Yang. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry", she wasn't sorry, "But that image of you looking all serious in those starry pajamas is too much for me to handle. You look like a flavor of ice cream!"

Jaune was quickly defensive, "Hey! It just shows my pride for America. Plus, these are super durable, comfortable, and overall a professional choice for the race." This prompted even more hysterical laughter from Yang. "Jaune it's just barely above a onesie in terms of 'professionality'."

That was something Jaune couldn't allow, "Did you just mock the onesie? I'll have you know I packed a onesie, they're the most comfy choice for night time relaxing and they keep me warm."

This didn't need any witty comment from Yang, as even Jaune began to laugh at what he just said. After laughing it all out, Yang put on her 'Go Go Zeppeli!' grin, and spoke to Jaune. "I hope you understand this next part is going to be tough, but let's wrap this up together, it'll be a one two finish, and i'm going to be first."

* * *

 **If you read the manga, you'll notice I changed up this chapter quite a bit. It plays out pretty much entirely differently. For starts, Yang/Gyro get a penalty, and do not get first place. I never really felt like that had much narrative impact, and served to just show off the steel balls and give her an excuse to use the steel balls with Johnny more than anything. The whole part of alcohol is put in to serve that same purpose, to make Yang angry about something to let her use the balls and talk to Jaune (Which comes up next chapter in this fic). It also just fit with Qrow's habit of using alcohol as a substitute for water.**

 **Overall, I should be able to write a longer chapter tomorrow. This chapter may have more errors than normal since i'm a little tired writing it, and my proof reading may not have been up to snuff.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Not too much to say. The story of SBR is picking up. I didn't have too much time to write today, and this is the shortest chapter by far, and not too much happens in it. Got to get through the small stuff to get to the meat of SBR though.**

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"Now my little Jauney boy, it's time for your second lesson in the spin, is that it sort of bypasses normal body reactions. What I mean by that? Well that's what your brilliant and stunning teacher Yang is here to explain. Now, take your wrist for example." Yang loosely grabbed her right wrist with her left arm, holding it as such that the fingers of the right hand were facing away from the grip.

"If it's relaxed like this, nothing happens, but," She instantly tightened her grip, and the wrist bent backwards. "If I tighten my grip, my body involuntarily will pull back my wrist. Try it yourself." Jaune did as suggested, and like with Yang, the wrist pulled back without him.

"Your body will automatically try to protect itself by wounding the muscle. And that's where the steel balls tie in, if you were to apply the spin to the skin, nothing would happen, your body won't get all nosy if the skin is under weird conditions, the muscle won't act on it."

Pulling out a steel ball, she extended her forearm, and set it to spin upon the bottom of her forearm. The green steel somehow began to pick up speed, accelerating more and more, and the forearm contorted into a spiral.

"If you think you're ready, dearest Jauney boy, then that cork you caught should still be rotating."

Jaune wanted to argue against the tone of the comment, but was too enamored by the mystery of the steel balls that he kept silence out of shock as he unraveled his grip on the cork. He hadn't even noticed it spinning until now. The shock didn't disappear, the beauty of the spinning just the same as the first time he had saw it, as he saw Yang... The magic of the steel balls still gripping him with, as she crudely dubbed it, a 'steel' force.

The comment was met with a groan from the Joestar, but under the surface it was charming in an obscure, quaint way. The type that only Yang could pull off.

Jaune lightly tossed it in the air, as he caught it, the spinning rotated, having no effect on his body, and little on his skin. The horse seemed to strangely react to the object, with what seemed to be a nervous skepticism, and a curiosity of it's abilities.

For reasons that branched out no farther than morbid experimentation, Jaune brought it down to the horse's side. To his disbelief it sort of connected to the horse without him really doing anything.

Suddenly, the side of the horse contorted, and it lowered its head up and down, left and right, and shaking its body in unison. Jaune was subsequently knocked off the horse, who had done so in an effort to get the cork off of itself. To be fair, it had succeeded.

Yang seemed to take the whole situation splendidly, however, erupting in laughter at the sight of a poor crippled man trying to desperately regain use of his legs through ancient spinning tibetan cork martial arts. Maybe it was a little more depressing phrased that way, but to Yang, the moral gray of laughing at Jaune could be dealt with later, in the comfort of her teddy.

Who was she kidding, he actually brought a onesie. There was no moral gray at laughing at Jaune.

Without the laughter having fully subsided, Yang spoke to Jaune. "And that," another pause for laughter, "Is how you get off a horse."

A carriage rattled away, dragging Qrow and Ruby down into the desert where part of the first race had taken place in. They were being taken in by the sheriff, who had up to this point, offered little explanation.

Qrow, with no booze from earlier, and even less patience after the long day that was the first stage, spoke up after the sheriff grew noticeably disturbed. "I'm all for a little vacation in the desert, sheriff, but why did you call us out here?"

Avoiding Qrow's eyes, the sheriff provided an explanation. "This isn't the place for ladies, , and why we had come out alone is that it's no place for journalists or reporters either." The solemn expression on the sheriff's face told him more than the words.

"The participants all knew it was a dangerous race, is this about any that may have… succumbed?"

The sheriff finally met his gaze with eyes that told Qrow it was much more than that. "You'll fully understand once we reach the area where we found the bodies, ."

The deputy that had been travelling with them motioned for the carriage to halt, "We're here." Qrow saw the same look in the deputy's face, pity with a subtle suggestion of vengeful.

"What exactly am I meant to be looking at?" Qrow asked. "Right behind this rock sir." Ruby had been terrified the entire time, but had stayed brave. This was the quietest she had been in years.

The buzzing of flies filled the air of silence, as they turned the corner of the rock. Qrow, the carriage rider, and Ruby were not prepared for what laid down in front of them.

Three bodies, disemboweled were rotting in the ditch ahead of them. However, the disembowelment was not humane, the intestines were stretched out, as if they were rope. The intestines from the top man coiled around the trigger of a gun, still in it's holsters, while the rests were simply tossed about willy nilly.

The sight of it made Ruby nauseous. She had never been exposed to such foul subject matter, and for the first time in years, Qrow raised his voice into a yell, directed at the carriage driver. "Get my niece out of here, now!"

As soon as Ruby was on the carriage, Qrow released his barrage of questions. He really wished there was alcohol. "Who are these people, and why did they die?"

"They're participants in your race, , last sighted at around 7,000 meters, where they were trailing the back of the main pack. No one noticed them leaving the course, so it seems, and no animal would have set up such an elaborate scene, alongside with the lack of tracks nearby. this was a murder."

Qrow took a moment to process it all. "And no one saw a single thing?"

"Even with 3,000 people racing together, no one saw a thing. It seems that the culprit was in the race as well, and the motive would be to eliminate any competition. If the culprit is still racing, it's fair to say anyone else who interferes, will be eliminated."

There was a long pause, both of them thinking over what has just been said. The sheriff was the first to break it.

"For the investigation, , will you consider postponing the race for a bit?"

 _This went down south real quick,_ Qrow thought. "I can't postpone it, there's no way, everyone has already invested their life into the race. All the timing, accommodation, everything would be thrown out of place. Even the president has no control over this, I don't want to put the race over lives, but it's impossible for me to."

Qrow truly did not want to be doing this, however, there was no other choice. The sheriff only sighed, before letting out a lonesome grin.

"I figured you'd say something like that, so meet my old buddy Sun Wukong. He's in your race, a favorite to win if I heard myself, and for the sake of this, i've asked him to pursue anyone suspicious."

The subtle sound of horse hooves came in on queue. Ruby turned to greet the figure she heard behind her, barely recovering from her traumatizing experience. A determined, confident look inhabited his eyes. She was greeted to the spitting image of a western cowboy. Leopard patterned shirt sleeves with an off white vest, with a similarly leopard patterned revolver stapled to his side. The man was blonde, wearing a zebra striped cowboy hat, clutched a tied piece of rope in his hand.

The figure pulled out a bouquet of flowers, and handed them to the red girl,"For you." Ruby had never so much as had a boyfriend her entire life, much less been given flowers by such a… handsome man. As quick as they had come, the nerves after witnessing the dead bodies ceased, the simple presence of the man putting her at ease. "May we meet again, darling."

The sheriff called Sun over, and after brief introductions, cut to the chase. "Now, while Sun may be a participant, as a star player to win the race, he's going to be high on the suspects short list for targets. It'll only work out better if he's pursued. I'll make him a sheriff's assistant to give him the authority, if that's okay, ."

Sun understood his role in the whole operation, having been briefed by the sheriff beforehand in case of the overwhelmingly likely circumstance the race could not be postponed. He had come primarily to observe the crime scene.

After Sun turned the rock concealing the bodies, his face turned to a grimace. _This… This is sick. I've seen a lot of things bounty hunting, but this really takes the cake. There's no way I can win the race after signing up to help, but I have friends in this race, and the thought of this happening to them… I won't forgive the filth who did this._

* * *

 **At first, I wasn't sure of the casting of Sun as Mountain Tim. As of now, he's hid his tail. We've established faunus exist in this rendition, but Sun isn't dumb enough to go around exposing it for no reason, when it's relatively easy to hide for him. I'm still not quite sure that Sun should be Mountain Tim, but he was the first one that came to mind, and I feel like when Sun is serious, he could fit Mountain Tim much more than his recent comic relief.**

 **I'm going to have a juxtaposition between Sun's internal thoughts and his presentation. He's obviously a very respected individual, but at least mentally, he's going to have a much more carefree, emotional mindset. The years of bounty hunting have just taught him enough discipline not to act on them.**

 **I might consider changing up the ending to his story as well, considering that Ruby is not married to Qrow, and are family in Steel Dust Run. It might be fun to change up.**


	9. Chapter 9

**This chapter was a blast to run. At the time of this publishing, it's 11 59 PM. Just a minute before I would have broken my "one a day" upload streak. Let it never be said that it broke.**

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Sun Wukong had traveled the countryside by horseback, and his name had become well known throughout the west. With the enigma he was, he was certainly no stranger to the stories and superstitions which inhabited 1890 America. This specific situation was too similar to a camp side story he had heard before, as if it were a crude imitation.

"In the traditional faunus culture," Sun began, recalling stories from his childhood, his face stuck in perpetual grimace towards the sight, "There's a story about a shooting star that landed somewhere within this here desert. The land is considered cursed."

As much as he wanted to look away, Sun understood he couldn't, any clues left behind may drag them to the killer. "The land has a funny habit of testing those who enter it, it can bring out incomprehensible powers, things you'd see in fantasies, but at the cost of cursing those who enter."

"One day, a man from the Schnee Ore Company came in, and started looking around for emerald ore, as were known to the area. After he left the cursed land, he began to kill others in the same way we see here. This… disgusting disembowelment."

Sun adjusted his cowboy hat, lowering it to cover his eyes. "Then right after he went on a spree, he shot himself, as if feeling regretful."

There was a long pause as everyone involved in the situation were struck with silence at what they had just heard. Qrow's face distorted in a way he hadn't done in ages, and he broke the silence.

"That man is dead though, we can rule him out as a suspect. If we are to continue this investigation, then what should our first move be?"

Sun looked around the floor for a bit, before walking over to some horse prints, in which there was one distinct set of prints he had his eyes on. "We need to follow these first, their pattern is off center and much more crazed than the others, alongside with a distinct pattern with every step."

Qrow thought for a second, before answering, "That doesn't make it evidence, however." Sun elaborated. "No, with running like this, it is evidence. The horse went crazed from the sight of human blood, and for the rider to move in such in a nature, he has experience in the desert."

The stench of the blood was unbearable to Sun himself, but he had to keep himself disguised from being outed as a faunus. The light reflected off of something by the victim's body. _A bottle, but there looks to be something inside of it? I should go check it out._

Walking over by the body, trying his best to turn his nose, he stopped with the bottle at his feet. "There looks to be something in this, Sheriff. Covered in blood, have you examined it?"

The sheriff shook his head, prompting Sun to draw his own conclusions from it. Shaking it out of the bottle into his hand, he inspected it thoroughly. _This is from the victim's jeans, but why would it come off? And even if it had come off, how did it come into the bottle?_ With too many questions and too little answers, Sun gave an uncharacteristic sigh before returning to the tracks.

The Steel Ball Run race would not wait forever, however, the night had gone by fast, and the morning even faster, the racers were now five minutes away from the start. Qrow adjusted his necktie, and took his place on the stage.

"The goal is 'Monument Valley', 1200km away. Every participant is free to chose their route through the desert, what lodges to stay at, outside of a mandatory checkpoint roughly halfway through the stage." Uncertainty touched the crowd, obvious some were underprepared for such a long trek through the desert.

Predicting this, Qrow had prepared. "Due to the nature of travelling through a desert alone, wagons with supplies, medicine, water, etc will be trailing the race, ready to dispense at a moments notice. Don't hesitate to use them, or you _will_ die." Speaking of dispensing, he needed to dispense some alcohol down his throat to deal with this god awful media.

A sick grin caught his face, "Do note though, if you use them you'll be retired from the race."

Jaune was reading the newspaper, which had already reported on the results of the race. With a little bit of nervousness on his face, he silently read the opinions of the editors. They all seemed to favor Adam tremendously. _Will Adam win it?_

"Why the droopy look, my dearest Jauney boy?" Yang, now wearing sunglasses, had noticed his concerned expression, and had spared no time teasing him on it.

"Well uh, so uh, the newspaper thinks this round is all Adam, even all the gamblers seem to think it's him. I have no chance against those legs of his."

"Ha. Bullshit." Yang was unaffected at the news. "I crushed Adam last time, and there's no way he can sprint through 1200 kilometers of Arizona desert. If he gets tired out there, he has no horse to carry him back, he might even die. Besides, I must be pretty high up in the gambling tables too, right?"

Yang's carefree nature got to him, as he found himself feeling better already. _Though maybe I shouldn't feel so good about the idea of Adam dying, of course I don't want him to die! It's just uh, I want him to gracefully retire._

Jaune glanced over the gambling rankings, and with every number that came after first that was not "Yang Zeppeli", he grew more frightened as to how angry she would be. It grew even worse when he saw "Number 6 - Jaune Joestar". This was not good, it was most definitely not good, Yang couldn't accept Jaune being higher than her in this.

"Jaune, why do you look like you've just seen an old lady sunbathing on a nude beach, what rank am I?" Jaune scrambled down the list, _7th - Blake Belladonna, that's not Yang, 8th - Mercury Black, that is most DEFINITELY not Yang._ Beads of sweat began forming on Jaune's forehead.

"R-Rank 9. Yang Zeppeli." Yang took off her sunglasses, and gave Jaune a glare. _Surely she can't be angry at me, can she?_ "What rank are you, Jaune?" A small smile was on her face, but it thinly veiled the pure anger. _Her eyes, oh god her eyes, did they just flick to red?_ Yang's eyes had indeed flicked to red, but went back to purple fairly quickly.

"I ask again, _dearest_ Jauney boy, what rank are you?" _Oh god, they flicked red again, this is not good, she's going to beat me into 10th place._

"Oh me? You meant me? Haha like Jaune Joestar me? Oh well little old me, i'm just uh… sixth place." The sentence gradually grew quieter as it went on, but Yang caught the last part.

"I'm sorry. I think I MISHEARD you." This time when Yang's eyes flicked to red, they stayed solid red for at least 5 seconds.

"I said tenth place! I'm tenth! No match for the mighty Yang Zeppeli! Yeah." That was a good enough lie, it wasn't like she was going to snatch the newspaper out of his hands, right?

Yang snatched the newspaper out of Jaune's hands, and went to her name at rank 9. There were comments by each name, explaining why they were in each rank and what to watch out for. By Yang's name it read, "Loud and impulsive, and unpredictable. While she may have placed first in a sprint, she is unlikely to perform in the long distance runs, due to her poor temper. Can be innovative at times, but is one of the most likely to be disqualified for violence."

Jaune gave a nervous smile. It wasn't enough for Yang, who began ranting about how these people are obviously not qualified to write. "It's just an everyday person, who the fuck even cares?" _Obviously you._ Jaune thought, but dared not spoke.

To make matters worse, their previous conceptions about Adam had been wrong. After seeing her own, she insisted on reading Adam's to see what made that "dumbass who wears black in the desert" so well favored.

"Coming from the Arizona desert." _You mean the place we're about to race in?_ Jaune silently groaned. "Has a specific running style experts claim allows running distances over 100 kilometers a day to be easy. With such a calm head, and a home advantage, he outweighs everyone else."

 _Great, so we don't even have the hope of him getting tired, or 'gracefully retiring'._ After Yang continued her vehement rant against the mainstream media, she decided to look at the others to point out reasons why the list is flawed.

"Rank 2, Sun Wukong." That name rang bells in Jaune's mind. Sun was well known throughout the horse riding community, even if he never raced. The papers explanation was standard enough, citing years of desert experience. Jaune pointed him out in the crowd.

"Just look at the guy, Jaune, he looks straight out of a spaghetti weste-" _From my home._ Yang caught herself before finishing the sentence. "Out of a spaghetti western. Look at that tiger skin, he's wearing a tiger patterned shirt, but then look at his hat! Jaune his hat is zebra pattern. You just can't trust a man with mixed patterns in his outfit, and don't even get me started on his hair." Jaune just started zoning out at that point, waiting for her to finish.

Finally, Yang concluded her rant against the cowboy she claimed to be a "disgrace to animal patterned clothing". Which wasn't that big an insult, but good enough for the blonde, feeling smug in accomplishing her mission.

"Sun is a cowboy, which means he shouldn't be too fast in sprints, but he did do quite well yesterday. I didn't even notice him, couldn't so much as hear his hooves, and as such he passed me last second."

Yang was quick with an explanation. "I think it's because of that weird hat he wears." Letting out a 'Nyo ho'. _Why does she sometimes get such a weird laugh, like she can have a typical 'haha' but then all of a sudden, she 'Nyo hos'._ Just another mystery about Yang Zeppeli.

Jaune pulled out their map, they had marked all the key locations the night before, and wanted to bring up his ideas, "Yang, I think this is all going to fall down to the water holes. How far you can go, how fast, and the route you take is going to have to follow the waterholes."

Yang nodded in agreement, even though he could tell she was still internally laughing about Sun's hat. She did look focused though, as she grabbed the map from Jaune and pointed out a route.

"Let's go north. After maybe 50km we'll hit the first water hole, if we get lost in this desert, it won't just be a 'graceful retirement' from the race, it'll be a 'graceful retirement' from life itself."

Jaune found himself gulping at that last comment, was he going to die in this desert? _No, there's no way I can do so early. This race isn't even close to being over, and i'm not going to leave Yang's side this fast._

Yang's side. Why had she asked him to travel with her after basically telling him to take a long walk of a short pier at the start? Of course there was the steel balls, but she benefitted nothing from teaching him. _Maybe i'm reading too much into this, maybe she just likes me._

As a friend of course, Jaune was certain of that much, but Jaune still wasn't sure of what he thought of the foreign Zeppeli. She was crazy, impulsive, mischievous, gorgeous, brutish and most of all arrogant, but he didn't want to race without her, not one bit.

He looked to his side, to see her trying to brush her hair. _Really? Now of all times?!_ _Minutes before the race?!_

The now-familiar announcer's voice travelled through the starting line, "Thirty seconds left until the start of stage two!"

Cinder Fall put on her goggles.

Neptune was picking his nose.

Sun adjusted his hat.

Adam braced into starting position.

Yang put away her brush.

Jaune looked inside of his palm, a little cork that had stopped spinning. _Before the end of this stage, I will get you to revolve again._

Tightening his grip around the little cork, the announcer shouted "The second stage has begun!"

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 **More to come tomorrow!**


	10. Update - Semblances and Etc

**Update on the story.**

 **I've been busy the past few days, leading to poorer quality chapters that are also shorter. I'm free all of Sunday, so I hope to update twice tomorrow with double length chapters.**

 **Sorry for putting this in the feed if you expected a chapter**

 **I'd also like to use this as an opportunity to explain what i've decided to do about semblances.**

 **Semblances are a core part of RWBY, and while I haven't transferred much of RWBY over, not even using the setting of Remnant, I would like to bring Semblances over to this story. Initially, I thought that everyone with a semblance in the story should be able to use a semblance here, but then that got me thinking, Qrow's bad luck wouldn't make sense with his role, neither would Ruby's speed mean anything at all.**

 **So, I thought to combine a core part of Jojo fighting with a core part of Rwby fighting, as in, make semblances a part of the stand, however, here's the thing with that, some major characters don't truly have a "stand" until near the end, and what they do have for a sort of ghetto 'stand' isn't used for fighting as much as it is used for information and examining things.**

 **I don't want to spoil the character, but i'll call them out once they receive the information stand. However, the information stand is still** ** _technically_** **a stand, so even though the stand itself can't incorporate their semblance, it doesn't mean that they still can't use it. So that's my sort of weird explanation for the one specific character.**

 **Then there's also characters, however, who's semblances don't fit with their stand at all, like the previous example but more like they'd be two separate things entirely.**

 **I received the suggestion to try incorporating the semblances into the riders horses, but that would also not work out as well. How exactly would say, Weiss, use her semblance via horse? How would Yang? Etc.**

 **The final conclusion I reached is that semblances would become active when a user received a stand, but the semblance is not exclusive to the entity of the stand, although it can be applied to the stand. So rather than Ruby's stand having super speed, she would have super speed which she could give to her stand. This also deals with the information stand issue, and it deals with stands that conflict with the semblance because the stand doesn't have to incorporate it by force anymore.**

 **It'll cause a lot of fights to be retold in a drastically different way, though. Fights that ended in a traditional jojo way, "I found out your weakness and I will now hit you with my stand a lot!", will now be resolved with creativity.**

 **I'm not sure if this will affect deaths, yet, but i'm not ruling out changing the entire conclusions of fights because of semblances yet.**

 **Sorry for this just being an update, but I felt it needed to be done.**


	11. Chapter 10

**Uploaded 11:59! Woo. Was on time today for once, I couldn't find motivation earlier, but once I started writing this chapter, I couldn't stop. I feel pretty proud of it, and I think my writing has come a long way even from chapter one, and I hope it will continue to improve.**

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Thousands of horses began to fall into their natural positions as the race begun, the faster ones at the forefront, the slower in the back. There was a sort of unestablished hierarchy, with some racers easily shoving aside others, while the more passive were easy to let themselves be passed, consoling themselves with silent claims of "I'll pass them later," or "I'll let them tire out."

Yet, a foreign blonde gave no tribute to this unestablished hierarchy, and in a method very reminiscent of the beginning of the first leg of the race, instantly accelerated beyond and further than anyone else, giving no heed to any of the risks that ran with that.

Jaune looked to his left, where Yang had been only moments before. However, there was no trace of her there, except for a cloud of dust kicked up by her horse. As his vision quickly shifted back forward though, his eyes widened as he watched her sprint off, holding nothing back. _There really is no stopping her, is there?_

A clear trail of dust followed her, as she zoomed past shrubbery towards the vast expanse of desert in front of her. _If she keeps up at this pace, I won't even be able to see her in a few minutes._

Was she not the one who asked him to go together into the second stage? _Is she just planning on leaving me behind?_ Jaune grew a little uneasy at the thought, but he looked down to the legs he was kneeling on, and then back towards Yang.

That was all the motivation he needed to drive his horse to speed up as well. _I'm going to go after her! There's no point in even racing otherwise!_ A crack leapt through the air as Jaune whipped his reigns, pushing his horse, Slow Dancer, into action.

Jaune had made good progress on getting closer to Yang, before she suddenly swerved off the path they had been on, sharply leering over to the right. _That's completely the wrong direction, Yang! You're going off course!_ He wanted to scream that to her, but he somehow felt like it wouldn't have made any difference, and she would have kept on going.

Thinking back to the map, Jaune tried to visualize the route she would be taking. The path that Jaune had elected to take, and the main pack of runners chose as well, had waterholes relatively close to the beginning.

However, if they veered right, then the first waterhole would be. _The first waterhole would be at least 150km away!_ Jaune's face took an expression of fear and shock, and now he could no longer keep silent. "Yang! What is going through your head! Why are you going so fast!?"

Yang looked back towards Jaune, "Oh lighten up Jauney boy, we have other rivals doing the same thing." She stopped, briefly considering something. "Wanna come with? This is the shortest way!"

 _I thought that was the idea from the beginning!_ Jaune silently thought, but otherwise stiffly nodded. Yang continued on. "This way, we'll beat them all, including Mr. Zebra Stripes and that god damned Adam. Show them why I got first last stage!"

Other people began to follow Jaune and Yang, although at a considerably slower pace, and much further back than they were. Of which one in particular stood out to Jaune. She, at least Jaune thought it was a she, had purple spiked hair and wore nothing but a silver studded black vest, and fuchsia jeans. Her boots were similarly fuchsia colored, with black spurs.

This girl was _weird_ , even by Jaune's standard and he had never been the most normal person. Sure people adored him when he was a racer, but even he could tell they were sometimes confused by some of his more… abnormal tendencies.

Really, the majority of people Jaune had encountered in this race were weird, but even this was to a whole new level. He managed to barely make out the number that was visible on the side of her horse. _0215… 0215…_

Checking the list of racers that had finished in the top 21 last stage, 0215 was rank 17, ' '. Just another _weird_ thing about her, putting her title down as part of her name. Jaune didn't like to judge people at first sight, but she was an exception to this rule, everything about her screamed wrong.

Six hours had passed since the start of the race, and their pace had significantly decreased. Jaune was looking through a telescope to try to get a lay of the land, the area they were in was hilly. "Hey, Yang?" Yang turned. "It's been around six hours, if our map is right, and we've gone the right way, we should be getting near the top of the hills now. Worst case, we're around 80 kilometers away from fresh water."

Yang still looked confused as to what Jaune wanted. Jaune ignored her expression and continued on. "I was just uh, checking in to make sure we're on the right path and all. If we choose the wrong one, there's no real way to cross the mountains." Jaune paused nervously, "That is according to the map."

Jaune felt something was up. Yang wasn't the type to be this silent for this long, she had been singing about water just a few minutes ago, and an hour before that, and three hours before that.

Still silent, Yang took the map from Jaune's hand, and stared at it intently. Only maybe 15 seconds had passed, but it felt like a year from Jaune's perspective. Yang then adopted a more confused look, and began turning the map sideways, then upside down, before turning it sideways again.

The confused look not going away. "Yeah don't worry about it Jauney! We are absolutely golden, even more golden than my hair. Wow, I have such nice hair, don't I?" She laughed nervously, playing with her hair. Jaune was not amused.

"We're on the right trail, totally, absolutely, without doubt!" Yang then coughed, and added a muffled "maybe" towards the end.

Jaune's expression turned to fear, and lifted a trembling finger towards Yang. Now he was _really_ not amused. "Ehhh? Yang? What'd you say at the end?" Jaune saw her shyly look away, that was not Yang at all, he hadn't seen her look shy, well, ever! "Hold on, Yang, it sounded like you mumbled 'maybe' near the end."

Yang coughed. Jaune repeated it, holding on to a vain hope that it wasn't true. "Maybe?!" She hurried her horse a little further away from him, before trying to calm him. "Don't worry about it! Of course we're still going in the right direction. Look up there, you see that weather balloon?"

Jaune looked, and indeed saw the weather balloon. "So what?" Yang put on a smug expression, like she had just defeated him in a particularly long and difficult game of chess. "That means we're following the map!" He gave a sigh of relief. Before Yang coughed again, and added a mumbled "certainly".

Any relief Jaune may have experienced was now gone. _This flip flopping of emotions can't be good for my health._ "Did you say certainly?! Come on Yang. Its 80 kilometers to the waterhole. If we go even a little off track… I don't like our chances. Have you ever been in desert, Yang? It won't be pretty."

Yang looked nervous, trying to reassure herself more than Jaune. "We're fine! We have nothing to worry about in this place." Sighing, Jaune caught up to Yang, closing the distance she had put earlier.

Desperate to change the topic, Yang questioned Jaune. "More importantly, how are your revolutions coming along? You've been trying to spin with that cork, right Jauney boy? Don't tell me you've forgotten. Come on, show me."

Before Jaune could answer, an object flew in-between their faces. They both turned around, facing the direction it had come from. A shadowy figure was off in the distance, unidentifiable even in the blazing sun.

"What… What was that Yang?" Yang lost her nervous demeanor, and took on a serious look that Jaune had only seen once before. _This is just like… Just like the time with the man near the booth. When I first saw her._

"Just now, something, from somewhere, flew in front of us." Jaune was about to respond, but couldn't speak. _No, that did not just happen._ Jaune tried to force himself to speak, but all he could do was open his mouth, and lift a trembling finger towards Yang's ear.

She looked towards him, lifting her hand as if to reach out to him. "Jaune? What are you so afraid of?" Hearing her speak finally let him spit out the words. "Y-Yang… Your, your, your ear!"

 _Drip._ The hand that was extended towards Jaune had drops of blood dripping onto it. _Drip._ Three holes had pierced through Yang's right ear, and blood was falling out of it like her favorite wine. _Drip._ She looked towards her hand, and her eyes widened with fear. _Drip._ Yang went to feel her ear lobe. _Drip._ She found it in two pieces, separated at the middle.

Yang was now shaking, but she shoved her hand on her ear, desperate to try to stop the flow of blood. Neither she nor Jaune had time to relax, as more of the objects began to cut apart their arms, a hail of them descended before long. It took no time for their horses to respond to the assault, and begin sprinting ahead.

Jaune was no stranger to pain, after all his time in the hospitals, but that didn't stop him from screaming in anguish towards the sky. "Yang, Yang i've been cut, they keep cutting my arm!" Blood was no longer dripping, now it ran free down Jaune's arm.

"Jaune! They're coming from the front, whatever the hell these thin-" She was interrupted as she winced at the pain of another one slicing her arm. "These things are, they're coming from in front of us!"

The shadowy figure that had been behind them was now running parallel a fair distance away from the two, matching their pace. Yang's eyes flashed red, "It's him! It's that guy! He's gotta be shooting something at us, there's no way in hell it's anyone else!" She began to reach for her steel balls, when Jaune stopped her.

"Don't assume too quickly, Yang. The attacks, they're coming from in front of us, just as you said. Maybe they're hiding in the back of a cliff or something, look, for now, lets stay behind this boulder for cover." Jaune emitted a new found confidence, one that stopped Yang's outburst out of sheer surprise.

She hadn't seen this side of him, _I always expected him to sort of just, crumble down under pressure or in a fight, but he's thinking clearer than me._

Jaune winced as one of the objects hit him in the biceps, but it stuck to him, rather than just flying by. Looking at it deeper, he was surprised. "Yang, I think these are cactus needles. I'm not too familiar with the desert, but i've heard stories about the 'cholla', a cactus that pops off it's needles in response to vibration in the air. I'm pretty sure it's because they have seeds in their needles.

As Yang clutched her ear, suffering tremendously, Jaune very slowly leaned close to the edge of the boulder, before spitting to the side. Instantly, a barrage of at least one hundred needles shot in the direction of the spit.

Both him and Yang now leaned over the top of the rock, "I think those might just be the cholla you were talking about, Jauney." Yang said with a pained smile.

"And there are a hell of a lot more than i'd like, Yang." Yang's smile turned to disgust. "So who's to blame, us for coming through here, or the assholes that set up this trap? I think i've heard of these cacti before as well, but they're not native to the area at all."

Jaune was equally confused, but for a different matter. They were both now glaring over towards the purple figure in the distance. "But to launch the needles of the cholla, you'd have to be extremely close, like, breathing close. That guy, he couldn't hit us from a rifle! How could he aim the cholla. It's impossible."

Yang disagreed. "If he has the motive, it probably is possible Jaune. This guy doesn't care about getting a penalty, or about the weather balloon watching us. He's likely from the first stage, and now he's ALREADY trying to attack us!"

Jaune noticed the figure turning around, and as it got closer, he noticed that it was not a 'he', it was a she! _That girl from earlier?!_ Yang saw her turn around as well. "He's turning, but we can't guarantee he's the one shooting at us!"

The figure was getting closer, and Yang bit her bottom lip. "Damn it, Jaune! We're in some big trouble!" She clutched her ear, fighting off a scream. "At this distance, escaping is going to be hard… But the longer we wait, the harder it will be. Jauney, Jauney run!"

She saw the reluctance in his face, but this was no time to hesitate. Before he could protest, she screamed "RUN!" Jaune understood there was no way he was going to argue out of this, and this wasn't the time or place for it anyway. He gave her a silent nod, as he kicked his horse into speeding up, he began riding out. She followed right behind him.

As soon as he got out of the defense of the boulder, Jaune gave his manliest scream as he sprinted off without stop, Yang followed closely behind. The needles flew in the air once more, directly towards their location. However, their speed allowed them to dodge them, they were going to escape!

The needles, however, began to account for their speed as well. They were being aimed, lead on as if they were a gun trying to shoot down a plane in the sky. The needles shot towards them once more, but this time, they all went to one specific place.

They cut through the air, creating a whirring noise, as they hit Jaune's reigns, cutting cleanly through them, and going cleanly through his hand. With nothing to hold onto, Jaune began to fall off his horse. _It cut… it caught straight through my reigns._

They didn't stop, the needles didn't stop. Twenty, thirty, Jaune couldn't count them, only roughly estimate, but he saw them rushing towards his face. It was all so slow to him, slowly he fell off the horse, slowly the needles came, and even blinking felt like it took hours.

Time stayed slowed, until the needles connected to their mark. Then, it resumed full speed. There were now puncture wounds all throughout Jaune's neck, nose.

And eye. The needles had hit near Jaune's left eye, encircling it to various degrees of accuracy, and blood began to pool inside of it. Yang watched the scene unfold, before noticing a set of needles coming for her as well. She put up her arm to block them, something Jaune had not done.

She stopped her horse, and Slow Dancer had stopped as well. Jaune was on the floor, blood staining his starry clothes, and he was silent while covering his eyes. The dust began to settle, and Yang could only stare, mouth ajar as Jaune began to crawl towards his horse. How she hated that she only stared.

"Jaune, no, Jaune! Get on your horse! Can you see through your eye? She was trying to do this from the beginning!" The words sounded choked, but any choking up began to be replaced with anger as red flared into her eyes.

Jaune let out a cough, and then a weak groan. He lifted his finger, and pointed towards her in a sight that could have brought tears to her eyes, if they were not filled with rage. "Just, just continue without me. There's blood in my eye, but I think it's alright!" He let out a little smile for Yang.

 _Don't you smile at me. Don't you smile at me Jauney!_ Yang stood still, unable to speak in a combination of rage, guilt, and sorrow. This was the first time she was ever speechless in a combat situation, and how helpless she felt. _Hell no, oh HELL NO._

The racer that had been chasing them stood still, a fair distance away, relegating herself to observing the situation at hand.

Jaune covered his face with his hands, "Go on, Yang! I know we promised to finish as a team, but we're still rivals! Concentrate on getting out of here." The crimson in Yang's eyes turned truer than ever at these words, as she looked at Jaune and her hair seemed to float.

The hands revealed Jaune's face, with streams of blood falling from his red eyes, looking like the devil's tears. Still trying to convince her, "A race is a race! I'll catch up after I wipe up my blood." Needles protruding from the corners of his eyes, as he still gave her that grin, that grin that everything was okay.

"I got it, Jauney. We are rivals, I'll go." Jaune was surprised at the calm in her voice, but was delighted that she had finally accepted his advice for once. "Yeah! Go" The streams of blood were now mixed with actual tears, as Jaune struggled to keep his screams with held.

"The direction, i'll be running, though." Crimson burned her eyes. "Is towards that absolute son of a bitch!" The strange was still motionless, as Yang kicked Valkyrie into action, sprinting towards her.

Jaune wasn't there to stop her now, as she rushed towards her steel balls and put them to rotate, spinning at such high speed. Jaune's bloody, red eyes went wide at this. "We don't know she's the criminal! If you use that, you'll be disqualified! Are you okay with giving up so early? You can go on without me!"

She blocked it all out, as she flung her two steel balls towards the purple girl, still sprinting towards her. She pulled up her arms to defend her face from the needles, but the force behind them was so strong, that Yang couldn't hold on, and fell off her horse as well. As if in synchronization, the moment Yang fell, the steel balls fell into the ground as well.

Dozens and dozens of scarabs began to emerge from the vacant left eye of , something they hadn't noticed until such close range. stopped the needles, as she screamed towards Yang. "In a little desert village, there was once a duel. It blew up to insane proportions, and the loser," She walked up to Yang, stomping on Yang's back as she said 'loser'. Yang cried out.

"The loser!" Stomping again, rage in her face. "Was tied to a cactus, in the hopes she would die slowly!" Stomping again. "When she finally died, the cactus put a curse on her. Bringing her back to life to be a slave to revenge, a vengeance that would never be solved."

Another stomp, another, another, another. "I continued to live in the village, but things were never the same. To separate myself, to never lose a duel again, I began, I began to raise insects in my body! My beautiful body! Defiled with INSECTS!" The stomping wasn't stomping at this point, and Jaune was screaming, desperately crawling towards them.

"These insects, have completely surrounded you. It's the speed of their wings that create the vibration to allow them to control the cholla at will." No stomp, this time, instead spreading her arms to point at all the insects in the air.

Jaune still desperately crawled, ignoring the pain. "Now that you know, little Miss Zeppeli, it's time for you to die. No one, not a single person will run ahead of me in this race!" 's face turned to pure rage as she screamed the last part of her sentence.

Yang rose up, flashing her Go Go Zeppeli teeth towards . It wasn't anger on Yang's face, it wasn't fear, it wasn't happiness. It was pure, unadulterated smug pride, even as blood ran down her face and she cupped her ear.

She stood crooked, as she tilted her head. took a slight step back, suddenly uncertain. "Finally, finally finally! Someone who thinks like I do!" Yang leaned back and let out a laugh, a laugh that coughed up blood.

"You think, rather, you THOUGHT, you could just throw my steel balls down and forget about them? My beautiful, BEAUTIFUL steel balls?" Another laugh settled through the dead silent desert, even Jaune's crawling had ceased.

There was no time to stop it, took a step back. "It's too late, my steel balls are emitting a vibration of their own, and they're running through the ground right around you. In fact, they should probably reach you right about… now."

If the dozens of needles that had hit Jaune and Yang were bad, hundreds must have come out, as 's eyes widened, hundreds struck her body simultaneously.

Yang began to limp back to her horse, and hopped on. She began to ride towards Jaune. Jaune was on the sand, arms trying to wipe blood from his eyes.

"Let's go on, Jauney." Jaune looked up to Yang's face, and saw a battered, bloody person. But more than that, he saw her smile. This wasn't one of her Zeppeli grins, nor was it one of her teasing smiles. This was pure, unadulterated happiness taking its form on Yang's face.

And Jaune's fears melted.

* * *

 **The first fight of the series! This was never one of my particularly favorite minor fights in Steel Ball Run (That goes to Ringo Roadagain), but I have a newfound appreciation now. One thing I love about writing Steel Dust Run is that it allows me to really fully inspect every single panel of the manga, and I have a newfound appreciation for the effort that goes into every slide.**

 **I think this was one of my better chapters, and I hope you think so too.**


	12. Chapter 11

**I'm going to double upload today, writing the next chapter right now, so that's why this one is so short.**

* * *

Within a small little European country, there was an incident that divided the world, newspaper headline of April 23rd, 1890. Within said country, there was a little boy. The boy had come from a long line of servants, who had served various aristocrats throughout their lineage.

The young boy was to serve under one such aristocrat, at the age of nine. Carrying plates, cleaning floors, tidying up hats and shoes, things young children could be expected to do. As he left his parents, they told him to find happiness in the little things, for those would keep him free.

Every day, the boy awoke earlier than any other servant, and he carried the plates, cleaned the floors, and tidied up the hats and shoes. That was his calling, and like his parents had suggested, he began to find joy in his routine.

Precisely one month after the boy had taken service to the baron, the military had raided the estate. The boy was arrested alongside the rest of the staff, and baron. The baron had been plotting revolution, and while the plot had been stopped, treason was the most serious crime the kingdom could offer.

The baron, alongside his family and partners were put on trial, and sentenced to execution. Due to notes and papers found within the estate, it was deemed that it had been plotted within the confines.

As the boy had been considered part of the "baron's family", and had carried the plates, cleaned the floors, and tidied up the hats and shoes, he was also deemed to have "known about it, without doubt." The state would not reverse it's decision, the boy would die by beheading.

Jaune had heard of the story before, it being in one of the few times he decided to read the newspaper. He just wasn't that sort of guy, to understand the big implications of things, or politics.

The story was at the back of his mind, however, as he looked deeply into the champagne cork he held between two fingers, laying down on the sand. While they had set up camp, Yang had given him some of her most specific advice so far. ' _Visualize the spin, personify it in your head. What does it look like to you?'_

Even this was vague, but it had started the gears in Jaune's brain. He turned the cork around, and flung it in the air. As it came falling down, he visualized the steel rotating, the steel becoming more than just steel, and gaining properties he had never seen before.

 _What does the spin mean to me?_ If only he could figure out what that was, he might be able to visualize it as an item or person better. Yang said she saw it as a fire, something to cooperate with rather than demand, but that wasn't how Jaune saw the spin at all.

Jaune caught the falling cork and clutched his hand around it. _The spin was what really pushed me to join, wasn't it? So what is it to me!_

The spin represented his hopes of walking. It grew ever faster while he grew ever slower, but still, the spin was his hope of walking. _But why do I want to walk?_ The answer was simple, or at least he thought it was. He wanted his old life back, but after seeing that it had all just been one huge sham, did he really want it back?

It grew more complicated as he thought about, but his past held his one passion, the one thing that held with him regardless of anything else. Horseback riding, he had lost the privilege to so much as get on the back of a horse without the spin

He threw the cork in the air, and visualized himself racing alongside Cinder Fall, he visualized Sandman running past them on his legs, he visualized getting lost in the desert, he visualized running from the cholla, and he visualized her smile. Yang's smile, the one she gave him after that dreadful encounter.

It still stuck with him even now, bloodied, beaten, stomped on, stabbed, pierced, all as Jaune could only desperately crawl. Yet she still came out on top, and she still managed to pull out a grin, not a cocky grin, not an arrogant grin, but an expression of absolute, unquestionable happiness.

Jaune visualized them racing side by side, sprinting together, and as he caught the cork, he gripped it between his index finger and thumb, and right as they crossed the finish line, he spun the cork.

His eyes widened as it began to rotate faster, and faster, before it was violently thrashing about, cupped between Jaune's hands. "Yang! I spun it come on Yang quick!" It broke free, and began climbing his shoulder before flying in the sky, only to return to him.

Yang finally turned around, putting away pink, fluffy goodness to face Jaune. He didn't let her speak before crying out. "Oh come on! The one time I spin it you weren't watching? I finally managed to spin it! It feels weird, but like, good weird!"

The words came out of Jaune's mouth at such a rapid pace that it took her by surprise a little. She had never seen him so excited, really. That didn't stop her from teasing him. "Aww, little Jauney finally managed to spin a cork! I'm so proud of my wittle boy."

Jaune, growing a little bit embarrassed at how he'd acted, showed her the cork. "Spin it again for me, Jauney, let me see how you've come. I may even give you a kiss for your efforts."

If he wasn't embarrassed before, Jaune was now. However, he began to oblige. Throwing the cork in the air, he visualized riding across open fields on his horse, running towards… the girl in front of him.

 _What in the hell am I thinking about? She must have messed me up._ Jaune shook his head, grabbing the cork, and trying to imitate what he did before. Nothing, it just flipped around a little, like a normal flick would.

Yang was about to tease him some more, before they both heard the tell tale noise of a horse trotting across the sand. Their expressions both turned grim, remembering their previous encounter with strangers on this path, and Jaune stole a pained glance towards her bandaged ear.

As they both turned to see the dark figure in the distance, riding towards their camp fire. Sun was setting, and it would soon be dark. To ride in the dark was suicide, but it looked like the racer was doing just that.

"Jaune, did you bring a weapon? You mentioned this route was comprised of weirdos, and i'm beginning to grow inclined to agree." She looked serious addressing him, and he fumbled around before managing to squeak out his response.

"B-By weirdos you mean like ? That was just by chance, wasn't it?" Yang shook her head. "Right now, we're both champion candidates, _even_ if the papers seem to disagree." She spat out the last part. "If you have a weapon, get it out."

She was silent, before remembering something. "Of course, your darling Yang can save you, too, whichever you prefer, lover-boy." Jaune noticed her trying to lighten the mood, but with the way she scratched near her ear while saying that, it was obvious that she was still shaken up by the last fight.

Jaune was shaking a little, remembering the fight himself, but he nodded. Crawling over to where they had stashed their bags, he began to rummage through. "I brought a g-gun… but i've never fired it before."

As he looked through his bags, he took a glance at hers. It was much more ornate than his, and there were a few things poking out. _A newspaper, a weird looking emblem, and… a teddy bear?_

His curiosity got the better of him, even as he stifled a small laugh at the teddy bear, unbelievably that had done more to lighten his mood than anything else. _Boy given death sentence for treason, $50,000,000 needed for retrial._

Jaune remembered the headline, but didn't think too much of it, not questioning why Yang would have such aged news. What caught his eye more was the emblem. _A-A coat of arms? You can't hold a coat of arms without explicit permission from European nobility. Who is this girl?_

Jaune froze, feeling an intensity in the air. He turned his head to see Yang behind him. Her eyes shadowed, and without a hint of emotion in her voice, she asked the question mercilessly. "Didn't anyone teach you to not go through other people's things, Jaune Joestar?"

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't meet her eyes. Jaune scrambled back, guilt taking over his body. Yang silently bent down, picked up the bag, and walked away.

With color drained from his face, Jaune tried to explain. "I wasn't! I wasn't going through, Yang!" She stopped, and looked back at him. Jaune didn't stop there. "But… Yang. I knew you weren't from America, but… Where are you from?"

Her eyes flaring red as she hissed at him, "You should stick to your own luggage, Jaune." Jaune didn't press the subject, and Yang spoke nothing more of it. _Is she… is she trying to save that boy all by herself? Who is that boy to her?_


	13. Chapter 12

There was silence as the topic was dropped. Neither Yang nor Jaune commenting on it, with Jaune wisely deciding against pushing the matter, and Yang brooding near the camp.

The silence was only broken as the strange horserider continued towards their camp. Yang looked at Jaune, and nudged her head to the bag, silently trying to push him to get his weapon.

Jaune managed to understand her signal, and slowly crawled over to the bag. He saw the gun, an old revolver he had purchased for self defence. His heart rate accelerated as he picked it up.

He had never so much as loaded a gun before, although he understood how it worked. It was terrifying to so much as hold it, to feel its weight pulling him further to the ground with every inch he crawled.

And crawled he did. Holstering the gun, Jaune crawled his way to the horse, and imitating what he had done at the beginning of the race, flipped onto Slow Dancer. Yang went to approach the stranger, and Jaune, a little afraid of what she might do to them, and a little afraid of them being an enemy, followed behind.

The stranger stopped a few dozen meters away from the camp, and dropped off their horse. As they continued walking to, it became unavoidable to confront them. Yang reached for her steel balls, and Jaune, fingers shaking, unholstered the gun.

Behind the stranger, there were two others on horseback, hiding behind a ridge in the sand. Unspottable from the distance, they peered over the ridge, trying to look at their prey. From the beginning of the second stage, they had tracked them to this point, and were sending in the youngest to try to bait them out. After all, they were a family, and the youngest would garner the most sympathy.

There was no way they were going to let prime racers escape, not when they were right between their grasps. It was three on two, there was no way they could lose. Yang and Jaune Joestar were going to die, and the money would be left to them all.

The good life as they dreamed it, the money was within their grasp. The weather balloons had already come down for the night, and there would be no one to spectate what they were about to do.

Except for Sun Wukong. His day had been long, and looking over at the individuals from behind, he sighed, understanding the night would be longer. "Can't I for once, just rest a little bit before having to fight to the death?"

He dropped off his horse as silently as he could, and crept up behind them. Looking at the tracks they had left behind, it was them guaranteed. They were his suspects. The Boom Boom family. Unknown throughout the race, not even finishing with the top 21.

However, he needed one final bit of evidence to convict, and they had given him a straight admission. With juvenile comments, "Those blasted whores will never see it coming." Alongside, "Once we snuff 'em, think we can sell those horses?"

He wanted to scream, 'No, you can't sell the horses! You'd admit your guilt before even the trial began!' Yet, just by looking at them, he understood they were less than the intellectual type.

Sun had always been a fan of theatrics, but his blasted persona forced him to uphold the meaning of sensibility. Ever since he had been pretending to be a cowboy to escape cattle robbing, he had been forced to hide both his faunus identity, and his personality.

He'd grown into the role over the years, but still, it was only times like these when he was alone that he could really act like 'Sun'. Not the feared Cowboy of the West, not the sheriff's ally, but Sun Wukong, the faunus who happened to like horses, and happened to enjoy money.

Still, it wasn't all bad. The persona had become a part of him now, sort of like a split personality, although one he had full control over.

The faster he made this arrest, the faster he could get to sleep, one of the things that hadn't changed between old personality and new, his one true love. Hopping back on his horse, he rode up to them slowly.

The sand served to dampen the noise of the hooves, and combined with his snail like pace, the sound was all but muffled. He was practically right next to the pair, a female that looked to be in her 20's, and a man who was maybe double that.

"Unde-" He forgot to mask his voice, coughing again before repeating himself, "Under the law of the United States and Arizona territory, i've been commissioned as an Assistant Sheriff. You are under arrest for the murder of three race participants."

Seeing them not move, he added a necessary comment. "Depending on the circumstances, I have the right to begin the execution." Death was hardly something new to Sun, but the words still made him throw up a little. These people were obviously insane, but he didn't want to sour his day with an execution.

Their hands were slowly raised up, and Sun readied his rope. "Slowly, and I mean slowly, turn around. Do not lower your hands, or I will attack." They began to oblige his commands, meeting his eyes. Until suddenly, the older man, 40 or so years old, threw a bloodied horseshoe at his face.

With ease, he caught it with his rope. The man had already began sprinting away on horseback, yelling simultaneously, and the woman was nowhere to be found. _What can't things just be easy for once?_

Sun didn't ask the question rhetorically, he briefly considered it. _Maybe because you're entire life is a lie._ Thinking on that as well, he shrugged, and accepted it.

Sun didn't have to run to catch the man, who had dived off the horse, and crawled into thorny brush. Rather, he threw his rope, and with the skill of a man who had to learn how to survive, Sun caught the man's neck.

"Are you going to come out, or do I have to pull you through the thorns!?" His patience had already began to run thin, and his non disguised voice had already began to reveal itself.

Fear ran through the man who was now being strangled, _There's no way. God damn Sun Wukong? Just our luck. I need to get the hell out of here!_ The Boom Boom father struggled as he pulled out a cheap knife, and was about to cut the rope.

Until… A hand appeared on his wrist, stopping the cutting motion. The only thing connected to his body was a rope, but this hand was at the end of the rope? _What the hell? A hand? Where the hell did this come from! Are we using magic now!?_

Looking down the length, he saw other various body parts on the rope. Two fingers, which quickly came and stole the knife from the man, before returning down the rope… Returning to a flat, purple stump on Sun Wukong's hand. The confusion turned to horror upon setting eyes upon the stump. There was no blood or bone visible, just a flat stump which was discolored purple.

The fingers were moving up and down like a pulley on the rope, all able to be manipulated by Sun Wukong. The faux cowboy had a longing look in his eyes as he manipulated them across. _I went through hell for these ropes, but they bring me nothing but sorrow._

The prisoner in the ropes came to Sun's feet. "With the power given unto me by the law, I charge you with three counts of first degree murder. Do you reject these charges?"

The once cocky Boom Boom father shook his head, accepting his fate. Sun pulled out his revolver, placed it on the man's temple, and fired.


	14. Chapter 13

**Late, but new chapter! This one is also reasonably long! This fight played out entirely differently than the Boom Boom fight in Steel Ball Run. I really could not find myself motivated to write that fight. I loved to read it, desperately trying to understand the mechanics of the Boom Boom family, however, when trying to translate it into writing, there was too much that would just sound unnatural to describe. It's one of the things that has to explained through pictures, and when I did try to write it, I felt a bit dirty.**

 **This chapter however, when I did it my own way, was very fun to write. My main issue with writing Steel Dust Run is that i'm mostly constantly changing tabs, trying to look at the manga, and then back at my docs page, then back at the manga. When I wrote it this way though, it didn't take nearly as much time, and the writing was much easier and smoother to accomplish. I think the dialogue feels a bit more natural as a result.**

* * *

Jaune violently dropped his gun, shaking at the sound of the gunshot. His breathing accelerated rapidly as he looked at his hands, trembling still. He suddenly became subject to a wave of nausea, and buried his head in his hands.

The desert was silent, with everyone still in honor of the explosive shock that shook the blackened landscape. The only noise that took over the ringing ears of Jaune was his heavy breathing. Even the figure that had been approaching their camp stood still and embraced the silent

The stiff mood in the air was shattered, however, as the tell tale gallop of a horse began to reach their ears. The sound had come from behind the man who had been approaching their camp.

Jaune sharply rose his head out of his hands, anxiety cured by the shattering entrance of the sprinting horse that had now come into his vision. _A-Another rider? Are they running from that gunshot?_

"Jaune. Jaune get it together, suck it up buttercup, you can have your emotional breakdowns when we aren't being charged by some crazy night rider." Yang loudly whispered to Jaune.

The sprinting horse hadn't stopped, in fact it seemed to have gotten faster. It didn't look like it was going to stop either. _Yeah. Yeah that's right! I can go have a nice cry in my onesie after this. Let's just, not die for now. That's a good idea._

He slid over to the side of his horse and leaned even further down to pick up the gun he had dropped. His right hand shook as it gripped the handle, but he stopped the trembling by clutching it with his left.

 _My heart must be having a heart attack. There's no way it can beat this fast naturally._ The pounding in his chest was not ignored by Jaune, as his heart rate rose sky high and he aimed his gun towards the sprinting racer.

It was one thing to aim the gun, however, and shoot. Of course Jaune wasn't going to shoot without so much as trying to communicate, but he wasn't sure if even could shoot if things did take a turn for the worse. "Jaune, get ready, if they don't stop, we're going to have to fight them."

"Yang, I've never even held a gun before. I… I don't think I can. I can't shoot them." Jaune hung his head in shame, desperately trying to stop the chattering of his teeth. However, Yang looked at him with no anger or disappointment.

"Jaune, if you find yourself unable to shoot, understand they won't hesitate for even a moment. Shoot only as a last resort, but if you do shoot, shoot well." Yang looked back towards the sprinting rider, gripping the steel balls at her side.

They were both struck in awe for the third time that night, as yet another horse drew itself into their vision.

Sun Wukong was giving chase to the sprinting Boom Boom daughter, she was heading towards the campfire directly in front of him. The night didn't mean anything to Sun, he could see perfectly in it, one of the few advantages of being a faunus.

That also let him make out the figures of Yang Zeppeli and Jaune Joestar standing ready to fight, even at such a large distance. _Just my luck, having to explain this whole situation._ Sun noticed the dumbstruck cloaked individual that had been approaching the camp as well. He would have to apprehend both at once, before they escaped.

 _I'll also have to catch them without little flying horse girl and 'Rookie' opening fire on me. And here I was, just inches away from sleep!_ The sprinting girl was rapidly approaching the camp, and there was no chance he could close the gap before she involved Yang and Jaune.

 _By the looks of it, though, they're going to involve themselves before I have a chance to stop it._ The cloaked individual, who he now recognized as the Boom Boom son, finally began to move, and started sprinting towards his sister, who had left him in the dust.

 _Ooh, finally he moves! Maybe now it'll be a little fun to catch him._ Sun tried forgetting he was a gruesome murderer, grimacing as he remembered the scene with the sheriff. _This boy can't be over 19. He must have been shoved into it by his father, what a sad family._

"You're a little too late, buddy." Sun wrapped a rope around the body of the abandoned son, restraining his arms as well. As soon as Sun was certain the rope was tightly in place, he pulled the kid off the horse. _If I wait too long, he'll find someway to get through the rope, I need to make this quick._

The night vision available to faunus was not privy to Yang and Jaune. Jaune was getting real tired of being surprised this night. "Oh come ON! Is one fight a day not enough? Now we're right in the middle of a crazy man with rope, and two people who must have REALLY pissed him off."

Yang had tried to maintain her composure, but the time for negotiation had passed. Yet even in her current emotional state, the opportunity for a pun could not have been passed up.

"Hey Jaune, looks like that guy got 'roped' into a bad situation!" Jaune shot her a glare, that told her this was not the time. "Yeah yeah Jauney, i'm going to trap them, I've been practicing this for the desert stages. Put a little faith in me."

Yang wrestled a little with her belt, and opened the lid of the canteen that rested at her side. She chucked it around halfway between her and the sprinting rider, letting the water seep out into the sand.

The sprinting horse of the leading lady was now maybe 50 meters away, and Yang was no stranger to horses. That distance would easily be cross able within a few seconds, and she needed to move fast.

Taking out one of the steel balls at her side, she threw it above, and visualized the spin in her mind. The little exercise was no longer necessary, yet Yang did it anyways.

The vividly rich landscape of the Italian mountains embraced her mind's eye, leaving no room for any other thoughts. The night winds took the leaves in trance, and at this hour, even the crickets ceased to creek. There was a younger image of herself, desperately wrestling with a roughly spherical rock against the hard rock of the mountain.

Her father had just begun teaching her the Zeppeli lineage of the spin. The training program he had set up was sufficient, but Yang was not the type to wait for long term gains. She had snuck off in the night, trying to imitate exactly what she had seen her father do so many times.

She had little success, however, and it ended up to just be an hour long session of her smashing her small rock against something infinitely larger and insurmountable.

Again and again, she placed the rock between her index finger and her thumb, and snapped them in opposite directions. A small spin appeared for a second, and as it fell into her palm, she tried smashing it into the wall in front of her. Every time this happened, the spin would die before it could so much as begin to dent the mountain.

Steps began to creak from behind her, as Yang spun around to greet her father. The scruffy looking blonde man looked down at his daughter, letting out a "Nyo-ho." It was just one of the kinks of their family after all, that quickly identifiable laugh.

"Yang," The laugh had taken her off guard, she expected disappointment, anger, or maybe even just a tired 'let's go back.' "Let me see that rock." She was still a little stunned, and said nothing as she obliged. Something unusual even for her at a young age.

"The issue with what you're doing, Yang, is that the spin is something you feel. Snapping your hands and trying to replicate it like a machine will never work. Every single time you spin, every time you force something to rotate, you need to understand the rotate and understand the motions. To put it lightly, the spin isn't an object or idea, it's alive. Treat it as if it's alive, as if it's an animal waiting to be tamed, and you'll get better results."

Taiyang Zeppeli tossed the rock in the air, and caught it between his index and thumb. He closed his eyes, flicked them with opposite direction, and the sound of rotation erupted. He held the rotating rock in his hand, and rotated his body alongside it as he ran his hand into the wall which had held Yang hostage for so long.

The rock wall was no more, rather in its place was a small hole. It was not deep enough to reach to the other side of the mountain, but it was deep enough for Taiyang to stick his arm in fully.

Yang beamed at the sight. "Alright, alright, alright, you've had your fun. Let me try that now, Dad." Her dad gave a light smile of his own, and tossed her the rock.

Trying to imitate his motions, she threw the sphere into the air. Yang closed her eyes, trying to feel the spin. It felt as if the world slowed around her, she could hear the steps of every animal in the surrounding brush, she could hear the wind caressing her eye, and then she heard the sharp decline of the rock.

 _Not too soon, not too late. I gotta get this right, or i'll look even more dumb to my old man._ As the rock fell, she smoothly glided her hand to catch it, as before, between her index and thumb. "Elegance isn't really my style!" She yelled out the phrase as she snapped, and compared to the graceful spin of her father, an exploding spin erupted within her hand.

She smashed it against the wall, rotating her body in a fashion much more violent than her father. The explosive spin shattered the wall, making cracks throughout the immediate structure, but having a much less deep effect.

Yang grinned, letting out a comparatively bare smile, there was no Zeppeli pride on those teeth yet. Her father clapped, with a cheerful demeanor that was soon stolen by one more serious.

"Yang, i'm proud of you managing to capture the spin so early. But, look at the cracks you caused. The spin is not exclusively a weapon. The power of your spin is to be envied, and I never accomplished anything like that as a kid, but those cracks in the rock may spell someone's untimely death if you use the spin in that fashion forever."

She let out a little pout to this. "Jeez. Is it too hard to let me be proud for a little bit?" The cheerful demeanor returned. "Nah. I guess it's not. Hand me that rock, Yang. I want to demonstrate one more thing to you."

Shrugging a little, she obliged. Her father threw the rock in the air again, but this time, he held his palm facing her face, fingers pointing to the sky. The rock fell on the fingers, and dropped to the left. It was a light enough rock to not cause any pain, but Yang still winced a little at the sight.

"Yang, the spin is unpredictable, just like an animal to be tamed as I said before. But the reason I did this was to show you something more. When that rock fell, you didn't know if it was going to fall to the left, or to the right. Think of it even as a game of tennis. Nobody knows where the tennis ball will fall after it tips the net. This may not make too much sense now, but think on it tonight, and for the rest of your life."

Seeing Yang's confused face, Taiyang just laughed. "You don't have to understand it now, Yang. Let's go home for now."

The steel ball fell into Yang's hand. Rather than using her index finger and thumb as she used as a child, her entire hand worked together to create a spin. "I call this 'Desert Tactical Maneuver Nine', Jaune!"

There weren't eight others, but nine just had a _cool_ ring to it, and who was Yang to question something cool?

She threw the steel ball where the water had been pooling, the rotation, rather than spreading sand everywhere, stayed in it's place. The steel ball burrowed its way into the ground, stealing its way beneath the wet surface.

The Boom Boom daughter was now approaching at breakneck speed, although Sun Wukong had been closing the gap. _50 meters, 45 meters, 40 meters. I just need a little more time!_ Spotting a boulder around eight horse lengths ahead of him, Sun threw a rope around it and pulled, hoping to get just a little bit more distance out of it.

It had indeed netted him a meter or two, but that would not be enough to stop the Boom Boom daughter from reaching the campsite, where he would inevitably be stopped and questioned, wasting precious time. He doubted the two unprepared racers could stop the daughter, but after seeing her zoom by, they would have the capabilities to stop him at the very least.

 _I can't afford to let that happen!_ _I'm going to have to restrain both Yang and Jaune, until I apprehend the daughter._

The daughter was about to sprint over the canteen that had been, from her perspective, haphazardly tossed at her. Grinning, she was in the home stretch for a clean getaway. "Jauney boy, Maneuver Nine initiating!"

 _What in the hell is Maneuver Nine?_ The canteen she had just stepped around suddenly fell through the ground, alongside the legs of her horse, and by extension, herself. A small hole had appeared beneath them, and her confusion was only doubled as a green ball streaked from the bottom of said hole, and flew through the air.

"Jesus Christ Yang, quicksand? You made quicksand, Yang? Ignoring that, you used one of our LAST canteens of water in which we're eighty kilometers away from the next water hole, just to make quicksand? How many did you use practicing this! Is that why my canteen was mysteriously light after I went to use the little cowboy's room?"

"Well SORRY for apprehending the racer sprinting towards us! Y'know, you could show a little more appreciation. I just possible saved your life! Besides, we can always loot more water off her."

"So you don't deny using up our precious water to practice this 'Maneuver Nine.' Why didn't you just hit her with the steel ball! It would have done just about as much of the same effect. While I was over here trying to inhale the dew off of a wild cactus, you were over here naming maneuvers! What are the other eight maneuvers, huh? Could we not use 'maneuver throw the steel ball at them?' I liked that maneuver, Yang!"

"Sometimes, you need to use a little bit of finesse. If anyone else was watching, which, there is that one killer rope man behind her by the way, but ignoring him, if anyone else was watching, I could have been disqualified! This way is entirely legal, especially since she was not going to slow down, and was likely to trample us."

"Yang you didn't even ask her to slow down! And you're caring about being disqualified when we went through such an intense fight earlier today? It doesn't really seem like they give much of a damn, Yang."

"You can never be too careful, Jauney boy. In ANY case, there's no changing the past, and you gotta admit, Maneuver Nine was pretty cool. Eh? Ehhh?"

Jaune sighed. "Yes, it was sort of cool, Yang. You're right on that end." Jaune even let out a small smile. "It was actually more than just sort of cool. How did you even get the idea for that?"

Yang let out a Go Go Zeppeli grin as she gave her answer. "Only in the finest literature available to the American citizen, Jauney boy, comic books!"

Sun Wukong was watching from behind the hole, just staring at the scene unfolding in front of him. There was no expression on his face, just shock.

Sun was by no means an alcoholic, but he knew that tonight, he was going to need a drink.

* * *

 **There was one thing that stood out to me regarding just what i'd done. There was a little bit of a tone shift from serious to comedic, but that's also how the manga itself handles things. Johnny isn't nearly as opposed to the gun as Jaune, but we can see Johnny fumbling with it as well. I really enjoyed writing two parts of this chapter. The flashback scene with Yang, which was also a callback to her own advice that she gave to Jaune, was enjoyable. The other part I enjoyed was the little dialogue scene with Jaune and Yang near the end. Now, when I wrote it, I was a bit concerned about whether or not it would be in character for Jaune, it felt a little like Weiss. Please do remember though at this point Jaune is thirsty from travelling a desert all day, and is still a distance from the nearest water hole, and Yang was wasting it on 'Maneuvers'. He was also shot at by murderous cacti and a man who rose from the dead with insects coming out of his eye socket earlier that day, and you can understand why he has very little tolerance for 'Maneuvers'.**

 **He did come around, though. I knew he would see the light in them.**

 **Next chapter we elaborate exactly on Sun and his ropes, the cursed land of the Faunus, Yang's past, and either that chapter or the next, Tusk.**


	15. Chapter 14

**This chapter was a little depressing to write. I liked it, but I think I got a little carried away.**

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Sun was now sitting around the campfire with Yang and Jaune, attempting to explain the variety of circumstances that had led him here, and just why he could split apart. The two boom boom children were tied up and restrained to a nearby rock, and were of no threat.

"Whenever I throw a rope, I can transfer my body parts along the rope as far as it goes." Sun threw a rope at a cactus a short distance to his left, and to demonstrate, entangled himself throughout the entirety of the rope.

Arm, leg, foot, hand, torso, head, every bit of his body was spaced out alongside the length of the rope. There was no blood, nor were bones or anything inside the body. As he did this, it looked to be his body became hollow in a way, a part of the rope.

"... That's.. What in the hell? How in the hell did you get that? Was it bestowed upon you by Jesus? Did you find the lord at night and he declared 'Oh ye of little faith, pick up that rope and try to intimately procreate with it' and suddenly, voila, you were now Rope-kin?"Jaune had had a long day.

Even Yang looked mildly disturbed. "Excusing little Jauney's heretical ways, how did you even discover such a power? Most people don't really try to shove themselves inside a rope, and even those who do normally don't find uh… much success."

Sun sighed, before reassembling his body like some form of a build able children's toy. The story was not one he had ever told before, for it would expose his entire , for whatever reason, it didn't seem like the crippled horse jockey, and the impulsive foreign woman were exactly the type to go gossip to the papers.

Even excluding that, he didn't like the story. It was the birth of Sun the cowboy, and the end of Sun the faunus, and it wasn't exactly pretty.

"A few years ago, I was… a train raider." He waited for a gasp, but instead he received two blank expressions. Jaune flicked away a fly at his shoulder and Yang scratched her nose. "No? Nothing? The great Sun Wukong, a train raider, and no surprise?"

Jaune looked mildly interested before coughing a little and speaking. "We've been attacked by a crazy lady with weird scarabs flying out of her eyes, aggressive cacti, some weird reject racers, and are suffering from mild dehydration. Sun, if it was any other time, I might be surprised, but right now, you could have personally met Jesus and I would have shrugged it off."

Yang gave Jaune a look, as if it to say ' _Yeah, this route really is weird'_. Jaune scowled at her, still mildly angry over 'Maneuver Nine'. Speaking to Sun, she slyly said. "I guess you really got 'roped', into it."

The explanation served to only further confused and surprise Sun. _I really, really shouldn't dig too deep into it. I'll just ignore that last part about bugs, and her terrible humor…_

Shrugging, Sun continued. "I mean, uh, you do you I guess. Well, in any case. I guess I should also mention i'm a faunus. That will help explain the rest." As if on cue, Sun's tail rose from underneath his jeans.

That fact, at least, did elicit a reaction from Jaune. "That's actually pretty cool. I didn't think faunus could become cowboys."

Sun's face went grim as he delivered an abrupt response. "They can't." Jaune's eyes went wide, but he stayed silent.

"When I was a train raider, things… things were tough. I had grown up in a faunus community here in Arizona, and they were the ones I rode with. It seemed year after year, our community's land slowly shrunk. We didn't really have much, but we were happy with what we did have."

"As I grew older, I began to grow angry. Our community's elders weren't taking action, our parents seemed to constantly be getting by with less and less, and worst of all, we felt powerless."

"Under the guise of riding practice, I took groups of us teenagers, and we went train raiding. We had guns, taken from our parents without their notice, and we thought ourselves to be protecting ourselves, even if it was just in a small way."

"We never hurt civilians, took hostages, it wasn't for violence. We just wanted to take back what we thought was fair for all that was taken from us. All the land, precious minerals, livestock, our crafts, all were taken in stupidly unbalanced deals."

"Additionally, we gave ourselves the condition that we would only take from the government. Only trains branded with the American flag that were shipping commercial goods were the ones we hit. Luckily, these came by pretty often to support the frontier."

"Yet, the issue is, is that these trains were often very well guarded. We tried our bests to avoid conflict, but sometimes it came to us. Yet, every time we managed to persevere, and get by without killing, or losing any one of us. Loud noises and intentionally missing goes a long way to breaking morale."

"We would hide the goods near our village, and bring them in at night, silently donating to the treasury, or putting money in the church's donation bin outside. Hospitals would find themselves with thousands of dollars overnight, and never know it was us."

"Of course we took a little bit for ourselves, but we were only kids… Only kids." The last line came out particularly painfully.

"A few months in, we had all become fairly experienced. We caught wind of a particularly large shipment coming in, a big one from the government. Specifically the words we heard were 'enough to buy back our land'."

"We began to think of saving our village. Imagining how we'd be praised as just a group of teenagers somehow taking back the land of our ancestors. The same land we'd inhabited generation after generation.

"Two weeks ahead, we began our planning. This time, we went with a larger group than ever before. As the founder and most experienced, I was elected to lead the operation. We had no formal training, nor did we have any real equipment. The only guns we had were what our parents had, and some of us were even using bows and arrows. I was using the revolver at my side right now." Sun patted the revolver to his right.

"I was never the most detailed of planners, and I regret that to this very day. I never took into account the fact that once the American government realized that their shipments were failing, security would increase."

"With no casualties, I had grown arrogant. All in all, there were maybe twenty of us. I still remember us all gathering in the dead of night, drawing out our plans in the sand a half mile away from the village."

"It grew to be the day of, and we slipped out under our normal guise of training. I think they knew what we were doing, but needed the resources we gave badly enough that it wasn't worth stopping us. After all, none of us had died, right?"

"That day, there was an American flag painted on the side of the train, and next to the flag, was a large snowflake symbol. We had never seen it before. That was our first red flag."

"The second red flag, was that there were no passenger compartments on the train. The majority of trains we raided had both cargo and passenger compartments, they were small time and easy to cut off the cargo as the train ran off without it. This one only had cargo, signifying that it was a top grade shipment."

"The third red flag, was that day, it rained. I know human society isn't nearly as superstitious, but for us, it was a bad omen, and the dread was tangible in the air."

"As we pushed across the side of the train, ten on either side, it grew to a stop. This was the fourth red flag. Trains never stopped to try to fight, rather they tried to take advantage of their speed. I should have called it off then, right then, the idea passed through my mind. But… But the stupid concept, the concept of saving my village, the concept of my parents finally smiling down on me from the sky! The concept pushed me forward, just that little glimmer."

"I gave the order to attack regardless. We boarded, from either side of the back cart. I yelled out 'break in'. We were greeted by at least 30 soldiers, all with rifles trained upon us. I heard the pulling of the bolt, and the rest blurs together."

"I don't remember how many of us died in the initial volley, but as I screamed out orders to get back outside, I counted less than half of us moving. The train was stopped, and getting back on our horses wasn't hard. The difficulty lay, in that they didn't stay inside the train. They left with us."

"We split up into opposite directions, four followed me on the left, and I don't remember how many galloped into the desert on the right. That was when our real hell began."

"We had no idea where we were, and had very little water, food, or any sort of basic necessity. We were stranded in the middle of the Arizona desert, with nothing to keep us going."

"Night had begun to fall, and we set up camp, or what could desperately qualify as a camp. A small fire, and little holes in the sand serving as small beds. We had slept like this before, living in the desert sometimes entailed little… 'camping' trips like this."

"I remember, my friend, Scarlet, sobbing in the night. We were 'manly', and the noise broke me. My mind was shattered with guilt, and any form of leadership I had provided before cracked through."

"Day came, and the thirst set in. We knew how to extract some form of fluid from the cacti, desperately trying to survive, but it wasn't enough, it was never enough. We roamed around, trying to find our bearings, and my mind kept going back to one legend."

"There was an area we faunus feared. It was located somewhere within the desert, where a star fell to Earth. Compasses didn't work in it, quicksand moved the ground along, mountains would go away, canyons would develop. It was called the 'devil's palm'."

"It supposedly traveled a distance of many miles every day. Where it was a week ago, it was there no more. There was no record on its width, its length, how to get out. There's no way to track it until you find it yourself."

"Our horses died first, desperate from the overwork. We ate the meat, not allowing their bodies to go to waste, cooking it over fire as we laid camp for the second day. The meat was dry, our prospects were dry, our hope was dry, Scarlet's tears had run dry, and my mind was still dry."

"Scarlet killed himself the next morning, the gunshot woke us up. He used my gun, for he was one of the new raiders who used a bow and arrow. Within my already broken state, I was only following the others. No thoughts passed through my mind, I just obeyed."

"Three of us remained, and we continued to travel. The thirst would have driven me insane if I had been sentient. I was given the biggest share of water, in hopes that it would save me and that I would come back as their leader. That I would tell them what to do, show them how to leave. They placed all their hopes on me."

"As we went to camp that night, another of us didn't wake up. It wasn't suicide, rather this time the dehydration did him in. His name was 'Sage', more experienced than Scarlet. The only one left was 'Yatsuhashi', he had been with me since the first raid."

"He woke up, and with a body too dry to even sweat, he dug a grave for Sage. I slowly began to realize my situation at this point, and I think that it was less that I was unable to realize what was happening, but that I was unwilling to. I didn't want to accept dying in the desert, away from my village and from my only ambition."

"I had no family, I don't know what happened to them, only that they died in some conflict with humans before my time. The village as a whole raised me, and to repay them, I took away their children, their future."

'When night set, my reality was fully grounded. I woke up in the middle of the night, and i shook Yatsuhashi awake. The only thing on my mind was mind numbing thirst, and desperately survival. Yatsuhashi didn't wake up initially, I shook, and shook, and finally, I saw him open his eyes."

"He saw me looking down at him, and for the first time in my entire time knowing Yatsuhashi, I saw him begin to sob in happiness. There were no tears to form, however, and as we went back to sleep, I woke up the next morning to Yatsuhashi dead. Dehydration again."

"I, like he had done for Sage and Scarlet, dug a grave. My body had no strength, no water, not so much as a drop to be found. And yet, I dug. I pushed myself forward against anything else, and I dug."

"After the grave was built, I cried as well, putting Yatsuhashi in the grave. Again, no tears formed. After I mourned Yatsuhashi, I filled the grave back in. I was alone in the desert, there were no cacti to take water from, and anger filled my body."

"All I could see was that dreaded snowflake, that snowflake that had stolen my life. It was on the soldiers as well, on their guns, on their uniforms. It was the snowflake, the damned snowflake. That was who I blamed."

"In some sort of futile resistance, I sprinted throughout the desert. I took my revolver, and fired as many rounds in the air. I kept sprinting. When I fell, and I found myself unable to rise, I pulled myself forward on my hands."

"I'm not sure when, but I passed out. The 'Devil's palm' is not only a place of hell, it was rumored to contain destiny. My skin flaking off my body, hair falling out, I awoke in the middle of the night. I opened my dry eyes to see the rope at my side. One drop, one drop of dew had gathered on the rope."

"My body, alone, was absorbing the dew, without me doing anything. I looked around, and saw my body was one with the rope. I was the only one to survive, the broken leader, Sun Wukong, was the only one to survive."

"Perhaps it is destiny, or maybe I pissed off the wrong god. Yet, they say the 'Devil's palm' has the ability to awaken abilities within people. We faunus called them cursed abilities, but when I awoke, I could no longer identify as faunus. As such, I gave it my own name 'Stand'."

"Maybe the ability is cursed. Everyone there was meant to die that night in the desert. I shouldn't have survived our hell. We were supposed to die, so why did I live? Because of this ability. You can call that cursed or blessing, but I call it stand."

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 **I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with Grisaia no Kaijitsu, but I was sort of thinking about the bus incident when writing this chapter. This chapter wasn't so much fun to write, as much as it was compelling to write. I wrote in sort of a somber mood. I hope it didn't come across as too edgy, that was one of my main concerns when writing it up.**


	16. Chapter 15

**This is the first time I think I wrote a chapter over multiple days than just one big sitting. I wrote the first thousand or so words initially, and couldn't find any more time to write for the next 3-4 days until I sat down today and finished it off. As such, this chapter is pretty huge! Around the same length as the last one. Hope you enjoy it, I felt like I got a little rambly as time went on, but the end picked up.**

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The Boom Boom father slowly crept behind the boulder. He had a stand of his own, and wouldn't be taken out that easily, not by someone like Sun Wukong, a dirty Faunus. He'd been listening in to their little story, trying to make out the best opportunity to get his family out of there, and promptly kill them all.

They couldn't have expected him to be alive, not after that little stunt Sun had pulled. He didn't think the cowboy had the guts to shoot him, but it turns out he was very… very wrong on that front. _No point in trying to shoot me when I can control magnetism, though… dumbass._

The stand of the Boom Boom father was particularly peculiar, it was shared throughout his entire family. They each had control over that beast of magnetism. To his will, it appeared before him. A purple, reptilian figure, it looked almost laughable. A forked tongue and bug eyes, which rested below cyan cat ears.

Yet with the fact that the stand was shared throughout the family, its first and foremost owner was the father. When the father had been separated from the rest, only he could summon the obnoxious stand to his side, or in his case, inside of him.

He had metal plates inside of his skull, a fault of shattering his head when falling down a skull. Somehow surviving without any known brain damage, his skull hadn't fared the same. He applied a magnetic force to the plates, and caught the bullet within, not allowing it to pass through.

 _They're all distracted… I'm willing to bet at least one of them touched my children when tying them to this shitty rock. If I can just signal to them that the stand is in their possession, we can start the magnetism._

The magnetic effects were not instant. It grew exponentially over time, had he not thought ahead and started the magnetism in his head early, the bullet wouldn't have been put under enough pressure to stop.

But there was no limit to how strong the magnetism would grow, and the effects it has on the human body are terrible. Terrible enough to split out three racers intestines in a ditch, and to remove their buttons.

The two Boom Boom children whispered to each other, trying to figure out how to proceed. "Sis, what the hell do we do. They're going to kill us, we are going to die."

"I-I don't know. Daddy was always the ones with the plans. Come on, come on he couldn't have died. He ain't the type. I betchy- betchya right now he's comin' for us!"

The father listening was disgusted with how poorly her daughter was faring under pressure. If he had been dead, her hopeful thinking would have gotten both her and her brother killed. With the focus of their enemies still diverted, they had to move fast.

Who was he fooling? His children were dumb enough that they wouldn't take any signal he gave. He took his knife and cut the rope surrounding the boulder. Not enough to free his children, with their hands still restrained, but it was a start, their torsos were now free.

 _Really? Didn't you notice that you can suddenly move your chest around? That it's not so tight? How the hell are you still babbling about pointless things like last meals! Holy hell, who did they get their stupidity from?_ The universe shook its collective head.

Suddenly, the father had a brilliant idea. Night had fallen, hadn't it? There was no way for them to see him if he slowly crept up behind his children and cut the rope.

Jaune and Yang didn't know how to respond to the story they had just heard. When they asked for the history of his rope, they hadn't expected anything like… anything like he had told them.

"Sun… Sun are you… are you okay with it all? Isn't it tough to bring back up again?" Jaune looked towards his legs, his useless, useless legs as he asked the question.

"That was many years ago. Don't worry about the past. I've gotten over it since, if it hurt to say, I wouldn't have told you." _Though you're the first one's I've told._ He didn't add the last part.

"Have you been back to your village since?" Yang's face held a mix of expressions ranging from sorrow to anger to pity.

"No, and I think it's better that way. I wasn't supposed to survive in that desert. That was the end of Sun Wukong the Faunus, and the birth of the cowboy."

Yang wasn't sure if Sun believed the words he said, and moved to speak out against them, but no words came out.

A silence grew between the three. Clutching his hands, Jaune forced himself to break it. "Sun. I lost my family not through death, but through falsehoods and deceit. I.. I was pretty dumb to not notice at the time, but I've had to give up everything as well. In that small, small way, I think I can relate."

Now Yang really wanted to speak. She wanted to comfort, to say she knew what it was like, but she didn't. Nothing Yang had faced was as hard, or as terrible as that. Even her reason for racing, even that boy she left behind, such a past paled in comparison.

Silence struck Yang. She extended her arm, but once more, she found herself without words.

For a third time, she rose to speak, anything at all would have done, but Sun cut her off before she even began. "Wait. Don't move, don't act like anything is out of the ordinary. The father of those two captives is moving to free them."

Sun was a Faunus, and his improved night vision allowed him to see the motions clearly. "On my mark, we're going to rush towards them and take them on. I had already executed the father, or at least I thought I did. They're tougher than I thought. Be prepared."

Jaune felt the need to emphasize the obvious. "Uh, a little problem, though. We can't see in this dark." I mean, it was true. "How exactly are we going to attack them if we can't see?"

Yang had her steel balls. Rather than engaging them, she could've probably hit the boulder and caused it to fall down. Yet, there was a large sinking feeling in her gut, as if something had gone terribly wrong.

Rocks began to shuffle, buttons began to buckle, belts began to pull. The movements were so minute as to not be noticeable unless you were specifically searching for them, and rather unluckily, no one was.

Sun may have been able to see what they were doing in the dark, but he was not able to listen in on what the father whispered to his children.

"Hey, dumb and dumber. I'm here, keep your voices down and don't react!" His children weren't very good at following instructions, however, and both turned their head instantly to look towards him.

The father shoved his face between his palms, dragging them down, stretching his face in the process. However, he wasn't given the chance to reprimand them, as the daughter instantly started whispering. "Brother, brother! I see a ghost! Take me to the hospital! It must be heat exhaustion!"

"I see him too. Is he back to haunt us? God damn it. Why do you have to haunt us! Go haunt those guys over there" The brother wiggled his torso towards the three by the campsite. "They're pretty big assholes, go haunt them, dad."

Sighing, the dad said. "I'm not dead, but you two seem to be dead in the brain! Ghosts don't exist, dumbasses."

They didn't look convinced. The brother even made to speak again, before the dad interrupted him before he even had a chance. "If you say 'that's exactly what a ghost would say!' I'm going to beat your ass into next year!"

The son deflated, and the dad looked disappointed to have so accurately predicted his owns son stupidity.

Shaking off his disappointment, he tried to explain the plan. "Have you touched any of them? If not, we're just going to make a break for it. Live to fight another day, yadda yadda."

The daughter's face lit up, happy that she was finally being of use. "Yeah! The blonde one touched me when they were tying me up!"

 _Even when she's useful, she's stupid._ The dad couldn't hide the disgust in his tone. "They're all blonde, stupid girl! Which one are you talking about!"

The daughter, obviously used to such a tone, didn't let it hurt her newfound sense of usefulness. "The… The one that looks like an actress! The girl! Yeah yeah, that one. First place chick."

This, this the father could work with. "Turn on the magnetism." Even so, the daughter didn't get it.

"But dad! We don't have our stand. We're not… all… together… Oh." The father didn't dignify the statement with a response, and she pulled out the stand.

Sun had seen them conversing, and began the countdown. "Three…" The shaking around Yang became a little bit more apparent. "Two…" An iron mug fell over. "One!" As they blasted off, the spurs from Yang's feet began to rotate like wheels, without any force being applied to them.

Jaune had his gun ready, he wasn't ready to kill. There was no way he was ready to kill, but even he wasn't dumb enough to just have it put away.

The Boom Boom family noticed their attack and grew terrified. The father, however, didn't waste any time cutting the ropes. "Go to the right! Now, now, now, NOW!" The two tied up siblings scrambled to get on their feet, but eventually ran off together to the right, towards their horses. The father got up to follow behind them but waited for a second.

 _Which one was magnetized… Oh, yeah, little number one. The blonde chick._ The father took on a dirty grin and an ugly expression as he licked his knife. He flipped it around, grasping the blade between his thumb and index finger, as he leaned his arm back.

 _She's in the front. Of course for little miss overachiever. Maybe this will take the little whore down a notch!_ And then his arm flew forward, as his entire body lurched with it, as the knife released from his grip towards Yang. He sprinted off towards his family right afterward

"A little knife? Hurt me? Yang Zeppeli? You're really going to need to step it up if you can even think that far ahead." The knife flew towards Yang, as she leaned to the left to dodge it. They weren't as fast as bullets, and easily predictable in their flight path.

The knife curved mid-flight, homing in on Yang. Her eyes widened as she pushed her shoulder towards it to block it. It embedded itself on the leather, piercing through to reach flesh.

She held back screaming, but Jaune couldn't do the same. "Yang! How in the hell did that hit you!?"

Yang wondered the same thing. Yet she had more pressing matters than wondering, such as removing the knife in the first place. Struggling as she was, she pulled out the knife and threw it on the floor.

Only… Only for the knife to come right back and stab her in the side this time. When looking to her side, she took notice of the steel balls hugging her ribs as well. While she may have been wearing leather, it wasn't nearly as thick by her ribs, and she couldn't hold back her cry of anguish.

Throughout this all, Sun was trying his best to think it through. _The knife came back to her after she threw it down, not to mention the fact that it had homed in on her… Metal only follows magnets, but there's no way that Yang is suddenly a god of magnetism. Though that would explain the steel balls. Assuming she is magnetic, how would it have happened?_

There was no answer. Sun had not seen any of those… those special powers with the Boom Boom family. If so, they would have used them to avoid initial capture. _Whatever's happening, I need to catch them regardles_ s!

They were on foot, and Sun was on horseback. All three of them were on horseback! Even if they had a head start, it was only a matter of time until they were caught up with.

Jaune's mind was filled with red. Again Yang was injured, and again he had done nothing. _Couldn't the universe wait until tomorrow? Really? One fight a day isn't enough?_ He looked towards the gun in his hand and looked towards the knife in Yang's side. She was still struggling to ride forward, gripping the knife and desperately trying to pull it out, and Jaune couldn't do anything!

Not a single thing. Jaune couldn't treat her past first aid, Jaune couldn't talk to her, Jaune couldn't pull out the knife, Jaune couldn't fight those who had thrown the knife, Jaune couldn't bring the courage to pull the trigger, Jaune couldn't even walk! _Why! Why am I always so goddamn useless!_

He kicked his horse, rushing past both Yang and Sun. Without even thinking he aimed his pistol, and desperately tried to pull. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't do it. Not even with a knife in her ribs, not even just shooting them in the leg.

As his finger began to curl, he thought back to that day. When his 'true love' shot him. When he walked down by the forest, with her on his side, they were to share a picnic. Finally, someone who loved him for him, she 'didn't even know what a jockey was!'.

That same finger continued to curl as he thought about how she spoonfed him, about how they sat back and listened to nature, and just how she kissed him.

She kissed him, when she told him, "Close your eyes little Jaune, I have a wonderful surprise for you." He closed his eyes and felt her rosy lips touch his own, and heat grew within his cheeks.

This was his first kiss, and he had never been so happy. It all shattered in front of him, as after he opened his eyes to confirm that it WAS, in fact, a kiss, he closed them again. He closed them again, and still in the warm embrace, she slowly pulled her left arm from his back, and to behind her waist.

He thought nothing of it, he thought nothing at all really, his mind was just blank from the experience. The world seemed to slow, and everything was still. The only thing he heard was the swishing of the wind, as the slow movement of her left arm turned fast, and the bang, as blood began to drip from his body, and she walked away.

His finger uncurled from the gun, as he put it back in the holster, and shoved his face in his hands. _No! Now is not the time for_ _god_ _damned self-pity! Now is the time… The time of action!_ Fire burned throughout Jaune's eyes, he flipped himself forward off his horse and fell in front of the two running Boom Booms.

They looked at him, the crippled jockey standing desperately in front of their escape, with obvious scars, as he crawled forward. They looked, and they laughed. A loud echoing laugh rippled through the canyon at the sight of the cripple trying to fight them.

He picked up a rock to his side, and he threw it in the air. The girl came back into his mind, the girl who shot him, and anger welled up inside of him, mixed with the unshed tears in his eyes. As the rock reached its pinnacle, the girl morphed into Yang, with the knife in her side, and as it descended, even Yang stopped being the object of his vision.

The only thing he thought of was a sole green, steel ball, in the middle of the ocean, rotating. The ocean parted for the steel ball, as it spun, and spun to further heights. A green figure was… was forming around it? As the ball reached Jaune's hand, the vision washed away. He spun it between his index finger and thumb… and… and Jaune failed.

Jaune failed to make the rock rotate, and he tried to flick it again, and again, and again to no avail. The siblings did not stop laughing at the pitiful sight, as they slowed to a walk. "Hey sis, think we should take him hostage? No way they'd kill their own. Then, we can take them all out!"

"That's not too bad, but let's ask dad first." The brother shook his head. "No, what if they get dad? Better to do this before."

Jaune kept trying to spin the rock, every time growing more frustrated than the last, to no avail. "Come on! One time! Give me a break one time! Just once! Why can't I ever do things right, why can't I ever… Why can't I ever just save someone! Why am I always being saved? Every single moment since the start of this race, I've been saved, and even then I always lose."

He kept trying to flick the rock as they stood in front of him. "Why!" He flicked again, "Can't!", he flicked again, "I!", he flicked again, "Just!", he flicked again, "Spin!", he flicked again. Nothing.

The brother picked him up and stood him up on his useless legs as they turned around. "Go get the horses, sis, I'll try negotiating."

The steel balls were digging themselves into Yang's sides, but as long as they didn't rotate, then even as the magnetism continuously grew stronger, it would take a long time for them to break her bones. The knife was digging deeper, however, yet she didn't stop riding.

Sun threw his rope and caught the Boom Boom father's leg with ease. The father tripped and tried to crawl away. He fully restrained the father, gagging the mouth, as he plopped him on the back of his horse. _Won't get away that way, dirty... dirty murderers!_

They continued to ride towards the siblings, Yang following closely as to not lose him in the dark. She was breathing heavily, both arms resisting the force trying to bring the knife deeper inside of her. It was taking everything she had to keep it from implanting itself fully.

Jaune flailed and flailed around as he was restrained with ease. "Stop your scrambling, or I'll break your goddamn face, cripple." Jaune didn't obey, and true to his word, the brother reached around to punch Jaune in the face.

Spitting it off, Jaune continued. "Tell me! Tell me why can't I ever win? Do you know, whoever the hell you are? You're over here attacking random people in the desert to try to win a horse race, you are beating on a cripple while trying to negotiate for your deadbeat father, yet EVEN YOU ARE BEATING ME! Why did I get stuck on the bottom? Why am I always stuck on the bottom! Tell me already, I'm sick sick sick SICK OF IT."

The brother looked more stunned than annoyed at the line, and Jaune continued. "You know what? Screw you! Screw this all. I am going." Jaune felt a tingling. "I… Am GOING!" A tingling within his hands. "I, Jaune Arc, am going to spin!" Jaune's fingernails began to rotate. The nails of Jaune sharpened, and honed into tusks.

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 **Some might notice some clever little foreshadowing with various scenarios throughout this chapter. I'm not going to hint at them, but some ideas might seem familiar, or downright traumatic if you read Steel Ball Run.**

 **I considered writing a bit more past this point, but I thought 'Why not leave it with the start of Tusk?' And so I did. Next chapter shouldn't take as long as this one did. My schedule is going to free up some more, which means that this will update even more rapidly. I also edited this one a little more than normal, and since my normal editing is pretty light (I'm really lazy with it, I only give it a light read through and a quick scan), it should look a little better at least.**

 **I'm also not being so stupid, and using Its and It's correctly as of late. Christ, for how long that mistake has plagued me. Same with me not capitalizing 'i' when It's in a contraction, those are the bane of my existence.**

 **Hope you enjoyed the chapter.**


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